


The Absence of Company

by PBraida



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Abandonment, Dark, Domestic Violence, M/M, Orphanage, Orphans, Poor Mycroft, Poor Sherlock, Sad, Sad Sherlock, car crash, homeless mycroft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-10 10:29:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PBraida/pseuds/PBraida
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;<br/>He was never meant to win;<br/>He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;<br/>He's a man who won't fit in."</p><p>- Robert William Service</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Check out this work on Wattpad under the name title (different author's name: imnotpunkimpaige) because I thought I would expand my horizons. Weekly will come on Sundays now and they aren't perfect but I do try. Thank you for viewing.

A flash of body whipped past, just a blur to the naked eye. The plan of fleeing was blinking brightly against his eyelids, seared into his mind. Wind floated through the bouncing curls of a boy, his legs sprinting towards the locked gate. To his cheeks, there was permanent grin plastered. _Out, out, out!_  His mind chanted in a mantra. The thrill of the escape left him high on adrenaline, toxins running through his veins. From behind him, he thought he sensed another being and whipped around the view the intrusion. When he slashed the bar behind him viciously, the empty hiss of the air surprised him, expecting to hear a thud of contact. Realizing he had hallucinated the rustling, he spun back around hesitantly and continued to pump his legs. The orphanage disappeared into smaller and smaller shapes, depleting as he ran away. With pipe in hand, he stopped for only a moment to stare at the towering gateway before planting a slim foot between the bars. He carefully clutched the metal to his chest, using but only an arm to heave him about the bars precariously. The hammering deafening his hearing worsened with each climb towards the top. A moment of hesitation allowed his eyes to lock onto the wondrous side across from him. The area seemed almost impossible to reach in the final game, so unreasonably impossible. The very idea of crossing over to the other side would have seemed almost scintillatingly laughable; to anyone observing the situation, it was so waggish that he might just have had a chance.  _As the sky can never truly be touched but seen_ , he thought. 

His worry subsided as he attempted to shove thoughts of failure down. Determination coated over his eyes like [contact lenses](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1158575/chapters/2353292), prodding him to continue forth with tenacity. Halfway up, his heavy shoe slipped on the water dripping still from the rainy nights past and triggered the fall of his body. His trousers snagged onto a sharp point that dug into his skin. Sweaty fingers clutched the railing, desperately trying to heave him to an upright, steady position. With slippery fingers failing him, his hold loosened, causing him to lower a substantial amount down onto the tip. The point of the speared structure pierced him, slitting through an abundant layer of skin as to draw blood, and a horrible, blood-curdling cry of pain tore through the cold, autumn air as a knife. This was the second time Sherlock Holmes had ever shown even a smudge of evidence supporting the hypothesis that he was, in fact, a human being. Teeth clenched together around his tongue, eyes squeezed so tightly together, he diminished any sounds too loud from escaping, but the soft whines that stroked his throat slithered out. The metal pipe that had formally been in a death grip now descended from his fingers to the terribly grubby pile of season licked leaves. His will ploddingly lowered to a dull sense to just want freedom but the pain... he had never done very well at filtering it. His mind fuzzed from pain, shaking his vision into dizzy spells; his mind desperately ventured to demolish the feelings of agony. His shaking fingers strayed to the, doubtlessly infecting, wound, and tried to process the issues. He precisely tugged the edge away from the bleeding flesh and blinked at the jagged, ripped tissue.  _Do not... go into... shock._

His fight for freedom did not cease though, as he heaved himself up yet again, removing the metal from his calf. An anguished sigh left his lips as he raised shaking arms to haul himself up the last few rungs of the gate. His injured leg hung limply as the other continued to work efficiently to get to his destination. Below him, three men stared stricken at the abrasion, faces growing paler with each passing moment. For seconds they just stared in awe at the gory sight, but as the boy let out another whimper, they surged forth. With gentle movements, the thin boy was conveyed down to the others waiting, blood smearing across their fingers. The formally tan kakis were now speckled with blood that trailed down to his holed black socks. The man who had originally extracted him from the gating now bent to grasp the menacingly sharpened pipe that lay in the leaves with danger radiating out from the object. He shoved the damned thing into the waistband of his pants, careful not to poke himself. Without thinking the very probable possibility of an escape endeavor, the team of men started in the approximate direction of the main building. The boy, gathering his scattered wits and fight back from endangerment, he carefully investing the perilous environment barely taking even a few seconds to convey his subsequent actions. 

With agile movements, Sherlock raised his elbow to shove through the nearest man's scalene muscles near his shoulder blade, which in turn caused him to cry out. Then, with immense precision, he curled his fingers and rammed the rigid palm against his stomach, and of doing such, the man toppled forward clutching his aching stomach. These events occurred within merely less than twenty seconds and counted. The next man, who was much heavier than the last, thrust his chubby hands to the wrists of the boy, seeking to capture his most successful and efficient weapon. As the event continued, an advantage simply presented itself to the boy. The clever one wrenched backwards into the air, allowing his weight to counter against the large man's mass as a lever, and then he surge forward with his legs outstretched. This sent a painful blow to the man. His wrists had minimal red marks carved into them upon freedom. Mind more rapid than body, he had already planned to dodder away without actually moving his legs. Finally coming to a shocking realization that he hadn't stepped a foot out of place, the third man tackled him to the ground with arms pinned behind him, a bolt of pain ripping through his whole being. The wound in Sherlock's leg stung against the muddy earth. The man started trawling his sparse, narrow figure in the northern direction of the most dreadful establishment the mind can imagine. 

*****

"Get  _off_ , you maladroit fool!" The child kicked his legs at an alarming rate in jerky motions, eventually able to conceal any traces of pain into the mental prison residing inside of the boy's mind. The arching of his back against the man's chest desperately strived to rid himself of any further contact with this man. "Let me  _go_!" The scowl slathered upon the bound boy's face was utterly hilarious from a view further away, but to the man restraining him from close proximity; it was the very face of his hellish nightmares. Muttered profanities were weaseling past the lips of the man, as his face grew red hot with almost useless effort. The man held the limber arms to his chest, pinning them behind Sherlock's back at an unsightly angle avoiding punches, slaps, or anything else the devilish mind might think up. Each thrust of his legs and fold of his body ended inevitably with a sore kick through the shin to the man. The yanks and sweeps that dragged the boy through the hollow halls towards the office were simply exhausting and most of his attainments vaporized quite forthwith. Every grunt and yell that left the boy's lips was amplified as the noise reverberated off the halls, and so no strange occurrence, not one person was in sight because the others knew that when someone ran for the hills to head to their rooms in haste. A final guttural clamor and strike of pain erupted from this man as the pairing stumbled inside a rather dim and dusky room in which the Rector claimed. Immediately upon entering this doomed office, Sherlock gave one final tow towards the doors. All protests blurted out of the young boy ceased finally and allowed a rather thick, eerie silence to lay down as tar on an avenue. With his back turned toward the twain, the Rector sat scribbling something unreadable for moments before swiveling around to face a rather heavily sweating employee and the mischievous little sap that too often broached in conversations with colleagues and employees. With the slightest tilt of chin, the Rector stood erectly with perfect posture. His slim fingers drummed against his trousers to no exact beat.  _The damn clot is pathetic; mystery accompanies him like an in-law._

"You may leave now, James." The Rector granted his proletarian a surprisingly generous leave with the glare of a bull directed onto the young one. No one had ever stayed despite the offer, little to anyone’s surprise. The shaky man staggered off through the heavy wooden doors, ostensibly keeping his footing upright. With a clank of the metal latches against strike plate, a thunder of noise echoed through the hollow room's walls. The small boy stood tall against the will of his actual shortened height. Dark curls glued uncomfortably to his forehead from sweat and pants emerged from his chapped lips in an unordered fashion. His actions were withholding breath to calm his heart rate. Dark, dried blood caked the hole that ripped into his trousers minutes earlier. Small doses of the oozing liquid still gushed from the treacherous contusion, trickling down the side of his calf. The slight lean onto his other foot allowed weakness to show, so the boy bit his lip and stayed evenly presented. 

"You know”, the man spoke menacingly, his flamboyant leather shoes clicked against the floorboards, "there has been an awful amount of talk about you,  _boy_ ”. Said boy kept his lips sealed together to avoid another outbreak of insults. Remaining perfectly still, he evaluated his headmaster, thoroughly observing the details of the man. The Rector prowled around him, like a predator stalking prey, and sharp eyes dug wherever they landed on. Each creak of the boards caused a recoiling jump to race through him; he presumed his body was experiencing fear.  _If only my body listened to my mind, he fumed._

"I assume this had happened before and you know the consequences?" No reply formed from the boy, sparking some irritation deep within the headmaster. Another lap circled around and had the boy staring down at his dirt-clad shoes, trying to accommodate the appropriate measures to abscond. As thoughts whirled around inside the genius's mind, one caught like a fly to a spider's sophisticated webbing.  _Alternatively, I shall flee this horrid prison._ The next words to leave the mouth of the interrogator only urged the boy forwards. 

"There have been stories about your dirty doings and I will have  _none_  of it, Holmes." The disciplinary tone laced into the Rector's words liberated the Holmes boy to charge forward and lunge at the man. His small figure packed its punch as he wrapped slender legs around the man's front, trapping them in an unbreakable whirl. The element of surprise favored the boy and sent the older man flying backwards into the edge of his desk. Smaller fists pounded into thick chest, nearly causing them to topple over to the grimy wood. A cry of pain escaped the Rector's lips and induced the boy to smirk uprightly. Cockiness filled the boy from every toe to every curled hair that covered this boy's head. As a final clenched fist drove into the suit-covered stomach, hands anxiously gripped his forearms from behind, stifling any movement at all. " _Damn you._ " The Holmes boy muttered as he slowly strutted backwards and stumbled into the main corridor. The sharp glare cut into the man on the floor, nearly slicing him open. Sherlock knew where his future piloted to, and he had always known that he would always end up there. The man in the suit, the Rector, snarled as the wooden doors closed between them, Sherlock's last sight before total blankness being the straightening of a rather hideous gray suit. 

*****

The floral wallpaper exiled the unbalanced sight of the dark and dirty boy huddled in the corner against clean and proper surroundings. Sherlock's frayed curls hung limply above his eyebrows, tainting his vision slightly. He drew his knees to his chin; arms encircling the svelte limbs, resting his head slightly stop them in a rather cramped position. His eyes were sewn shut, traveling through his infinite mind of hallways and paths and maze workings. Bandages and disinfectants treated the wound that cut cavernously into his narrow limb posthaste before lugging the boy away to this tethered leashing. The gauze veiling the abrasion had blood seeping through as soon as it touched the broken skin. A deep black and green bruise commenced around the flesh wound a few hours after the incident. Across lissome fingers were etched scrapes and painted bruises splattered onto the digits and wrist.  _Apparently, the man's grip was much tighter than memory serves_ , he mused. Red marks from fingers were impressed into the small wrists of the boy. As for the dirt-defiled trousers, dried mud and human blood cells framed the gash that had slashed through them. Worn shoes, scuffed down to nearly nothing on their soles, were the only other item that perished during the desultory event. The only movements within the cell worth notation were the slightest shiver of limbs and shudder of shoulders triggered from the - as people tend to forget due to his massive intellect and ego - child. Against his will of course, Sherlock reacted to the confinement and injury with panic. His mind worked to trace parcels of fright back to thoughts of what might happen, some of which he had not before considered. Alongside that terrifying thought, Sherlock strayed to believe that Mycroft might abandon him for an easier lifestyle, a lifestyle minus him. He pinched himself harshly on the back of his hand, punishing himself for his  _mundane emotions_. He muttered to himself, stating little observations, and to the world outside of his head, he was going mad. He twitched his fingers every now and then, as if he were actually explaining one of his world-renowned deductions. Many people who had been glancing inside of the smaller room believed that he was communicating with the people he trapped in his head, keeping him company, or rather, not bored. 

The Rector quickly called upon Sherlock's last well standing relative, Mycroft, who had been browsing through the downtown as the events had occurred. Mycroft rarely had a chance to relax and not worry about his maddeningly complex life, and apparently, that day had been no different from any other. The encounter had been a "violent act of transgression against his peers, instructors, and headmaster". According the many secondhand opinions, the occurrence was a rather serious matter only handled in quite serious hands. A bobby arrived about a half hour after  _the_   _incident_  alongside a Child Protection Agent to either clear the complication up or make a mess of things. Mycroft had to wait inside of the Loiter Room until further instructions, hastily becoming more and more impatient with the discussion across the hall. He worried for his brother's health and mental state at that moment, because surely having been dragged into an alien room after a gateway nearly stabbed him through could not have amounted to a happy camper. Mycroft knew that his brother was going to chew his ear off about this and would probably blow off with anger with more violence yet.  _Maybe, he might pout his way through this and even be inclined to silence himself for a day,_ he hoped to himself with little emotion showing through to his face. Even with the minute joke that had entered his thoughts as a comfort, Mycroft had released any specs of anger from ever forming for he was just tired of this all. Sherlock's anger could always get the best of him and could cause destruction to rain down. 

"Mr. Holmes?" A man sporting a gray suit stepped into the room, carrying a case file and folders under his arm. Mycroft quickly observed the man's clothing and face, concluding that he was the agent. His clothing told the brother everything he could possibly hope to figure out about the man by chatting as a friendly figure for months. Storing the information away in a box of sorts, Mycroft rose to his feet and crept toward the man hesitantly. A plastic smile tugged up painfully on the agent's face, trying to radiate a kinder aura. "We need to talk about your brother, Mr. Holmes." 

"Well, I'm Agent Carson, and I don't think we've met but I know you. I have been tracking your brother's case files for quite some time now." The, surprisingly American, man sat down beside Mycroft in one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs. He laid the files down upon his lap and just sat for a few moments, each contemplating how to proceed forth. Mycroft finally cut into the silence with sputtering speak.  

"I see. I presume you know of his... history with other beings and -" 

"Honestly, he's just a nuisance to children around him, and quite frankly, I'm worried for the adults as well! How can you -" Carson raised his voice with a start, quickly retreating from the loud intrusion. Beginning to sift through the papers and reports and files before him, he finally stumbled upon what he had needed to find. The file was the entire reports folder for his brother, the adoption agencies' papers that transferred each time they switched 'homes'. It held every attack, every mistake, and every single bit of  _wrong_  that the young child had performed in just over a year. The folder was thick and heavy, and it appeared that Sherlock was much more of a troublemaker than Mycroft had originally thought. Clipped to the cream-colored paper was a photo of his brother from a year ago, still so young and still so innocent. Mycroft let out a shaking breath, trying to process what might escape the man' slips next. His thoughts scrambled merely into unreadable jumbles, unable to clamp down on a solid one. 

"He seems to have - how might I say -  _weaseled_  himself into more predicaments than I care to count." Mycroft finally slurred, startling himself and staring at the files without blinking, taming the inner emotions that were aiming to claw their way out. The man before him did not take to the poor trial of humor but rather stared with pity at him. Mycroft had hardly scratched fifteen but he had to handle the burden of his brother, which was  _the_  Sherlock Holmes. Many might say that Mycroft could have applied for knighthood, sainthood, without a glance of review and be granted such honor because simply  _handling_  the boy was such an effort for so many. Mycroft resented their pity and their words for the very reason that he  _was_  indeed his brother, and he was willing to do ridiculous acts to keep that boy safe from harm. 

"We know that you… that you guys have had a harder time  _fitting in_ , but we need to do something." Mycroft gulped, sweat forming over his brow with anticipation, "If things don't look up in a few months, the CPA agency might just have to…  _I'm so sorry_." Mycroft hadn't realized that a tear had trailed from his eye and streaked onto his cheek. He had not even known that there was even such a slim physical possibility to do so any longer, not after chaining his emotions up for years. The foreign feeling of wetness was suffocating. He rapidly swept a steady hand to his cheek and swatted it away. His composure was all he had left other than his brother, which he might lose in the end. The forthcoming words that never left the agent's mouth were enough to break him down; he had made a promise to a little crying boy  _that night_ and intended to keep it forever. 

"I - No, I shall keep him in line, I swear. Please, I beg only that you..." That was it. This was the first incident in which Mycroft had ever _begged_  for anything, and he did not take notice whatsoever. The agent started pinching the bridge of his nose, rubbing circles into his skin with harsh fingertips. All things Mycroft then thought were ideas that could have minor influences on the improvement in the situation that surrounded the two boys. Words fought at the back of his throat, wanting to scream out at the man to let his dearest brother free, that the child was just that - a child who required his parents to guide him, not his lowly brother. Before any words had time to mutter out of the men, the agent shook his head and started to speak again, this time with a smudge of hope carried through the originally monotonous voice. 

"Look, the only thing I can do is send you both back to the orph - the home and have Sherlock signed up for some therapy courses to help him out. But-" 

"If he acts out against anyone again, we will be sundered. I understand completely." The condescending tone returned to the voice of the dignified man, surprising him the slightest. His smile was cheap and forged and crinkled his cheeks back in an unpleasant way, but it never tended to reach up to his eyes and crease them at the corners like a truly happy person's might. The agent nodded in agreement before leaving Mycroft to yearn for his brother's presence. Brushing the nonexistent dust from his trousers, the eldest brother lowered back down in the horribly uncomfortable plastic chair he had the indecency of ever sitting in. 

A few rooms down the corridor led to where Sherlock, his dearest brother, remained. He had strayed to another shadowy corner of the room when the agent had come in to speak with him. His back faced everyone, chin to the corner, and silence in an aura. The man leant down beside his small form and tried to pry the boy's eyes to him. "Your brother, I talked to him." Sherlock's heart rate doubled for he knew his brother's anger sometimes got the better of him. A slight shiver ran through his spine when he thought of his brother tiring of him as everyone did, growing impatient with his uncooperative behavior, and curdled attitude. He prayed to whatever was out there that he would not have to face the words he predicted were going to fall from the lips of the case worker that had covered him for a year. When an insightful hand rested in his shoulder, Sherlock twirled around and slapped it away, disgusted. His face morphed into one of a sulking child who did not get his way. "Listen, you're only eight, and -"

"I wish to leave, now." He spoke coldly, little to his knowledge that if he ever attempted such a violent act against anyone while he continued as an orphan, he, and his brother would divide and send off, still not adopted, to separate homes for the rest of their days. The boy rose to his feet next to Agent Carson and pointed his chin out, back vertical. Before the man could stand and talk to the moody child, he had already stalked toward the door complaining greatly over that he needed to do some research about God knows what. 

The agent rose shortly after, worrying for the boys that had to overcome so much if they ever wanted to stay together as a pairing. _They’re already hard enough to find a family for_ , the man promoted. His footsteps echoed through the walls as he approached the door, Sherlock's voice carried through the corridors as he spoke with his eldest brother. Agent Carson waited patiently a few steps from the door as to give them privacy for the voices grew louder and louder as they bantered. Each screamed back and forth and back and forth until both of them stopped. Either the argument had ended or it had lost itself in its midst. A soft voice was speaking now, as if trying to cradle the others with careful earnest. 

"- Please, just  _stop_ , brother."


	2. Chapter Two

'Charleston Home for Children' tended to be inside of the section of location one might be inclined to package and ship a juvenile child to fend, if such child did misbehave often enough. The place, sans all children and or people of any sorts, wasn't too abhorrent for most part, for it had foods to munch, clothes to wear, places to lay a small head at night. The experience on the other hand, for the handful of children who had the egregious misfortune of carting the knave of the collection, at the orphanage was Hell on Earth. To everyone’s much great dissatisfaction, majorities of the collection were bludgeoned into the section because the more children are stifled, the more children will scream. 

 

 

The commodity seeming to blotch the children's mind with pique was the understanding of calling an orphanage a 'home'. Whether 'twas a morbid jest or an abysmal attempt at comfort, the thought did  _not_  count in this particular instance. The explanation as to why this was, well that in itself was the shadowing question. Possibly the people who would never live inside the refuge mused the term orphanage to be considered indecent or condescending. Alternatively, perhaps people thought orphanages were comforting and lovely, but the few that had itched their passage inside had no complaints towards telling what their shelter really was. In truth, however grim, the children had no blessing of a family or people to care for them at such a young age. The employees that volunteered, or otherwise applied, at the home didn't go through many initiations on handling minxes or handling situations that required a higher force of action. They were merely young adults that needed something that looked acceptable on their [resume](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1158575/chapters/2387527) or something to help cash in the bills or something to eat up their overabundance of free time. Deceivingly, the troop of workers reflected a kind and a respectful bunch, but the children would never have thought so in the slightest. They treated the children like mules in a worn out barn who needed keeping on a very short rein. 

 

 

The children inside, mostly younger than thirteen, weren't too rowdy as a whole. Mostly boys resided in the small living quarters, stuffed into the eerie back wing of the itty building. Grant, this was a rather large property, but compared to the monstrous structures leering over it, the whole damn thing was so puny looking. The lawn of the area, though, was colossal and was at least twice as large as the actual building itself. 

 

 

All the boys that resided there had shared one giant space for sleeping at night and occupying most of their free time. Six beds lined each lingering wall with a second story sitting atop them. The bunk beds were headboard-to-wall and, since the room was so very narrow, nearly touched ends with the other row lining the opposite wall. Altogether, there were about twenty-four [mattresses](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1158575/chapters/2387527) to slumber upon, yet the only occupied ones as of that time were a measly eleven, if you counted the two brothers that always squeezed into one small twin. Most of those spunky, energetic boys cornered into a square of the room that erupted with head splitting laughter and bangs emitting frequently. All of those boys made up seven-elevenths of the group. The last few digits without any [interest](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1158575/chapters/2387527) in those children were both of the Holmes brothers and two other boys, one named Carl and the other Mike. Realize the beginning of this paragraph mentioned that the boys in this here paragraph were over thirteen, yes, although Sherlock was younger than that, he never seemed to categorized apart from his brother, the two were kind of a package deal. 

 

The latter of the couples, Carl and Mark, had begun acquainting themselves with each other as soon as their young eyes had lain upon the other four years ago. Up until that meeting, the two stretched across landscape, separated by the complications that were their lives. Carl hadn't been offered an adoption since the younger lads began swarming, cutting his slim chance of an easy adoption to literally null. His last offer had been a year and a half ago and counted. Before this sad little tale, he had been happy and jumpy and everything a young boy of seven might be. That was six years ago, and his enthusiasm died to dull with each passing day ticking away on the calendar; current to the story, he was then thirteen on the mark. Mike, on the other hand, had grown up in foster homes rather than orphanage, trying desperately to snag the attention of some young couple wanting a child to call their own. Greatly to his vexation, few families were interested in his being for no more than a week before leaving him downtrodden. Along the road, when he was eight and recently thrown into that same home, another boy, Carl, strutted into the home a month or two preceding him. They immediately became acquainted with each other. Since their blooming friendship years ago, the two never parted sides. Both feared the possible situation of adoption, including the unavoidable whatifs if ever thrown their direction. For until then, they had peace in mind. 

 

 

The younger boys, littler than the taller, older, and more mature children, had a clique of sorts. Cliché, of course, that these orphaned young men even began the damned thing to begin with. In all honesty and harshness, no one even wanted them in the first place, hence their living quarters. They had no room to inflict the things that they had onto others. The pack of them moved as one, ate as one, and even slept as one. His friends called the ‘leader’ of the small, bijou pack Pudge, a joke supposedly. No one ever questioned the nickname for he once had been thin before the home, maybe even too much so. That place stuffed him thick, both mentally and physically; it clogged him right up. Sad as it may be, his main insecurity was what people had issued as his pet name, but never dwell on those statistics, for he was a mean, mean boy. He became belligerent whenever anyone poked at the fact that he was overweight and literally tackled people because of it. His main target, to no one's serious surprise, was the scrawny boy who had his nose buried six feet into his books. Take a moment to dwell and ponder who this boy might be... Well, let's continue. First, it started as playful teasing, bearable for Sherlock to handle as a young child. He never considered himself a child, true no matter how deniable the facts were. Then the insults rose fully to heavily probing him. They snatched his books and threw them around, tearing out pages; laughed when he scrambled to gather his belongings before they could destroy anything; mentally beating his mind of dignity many more than one time. Before long, the group crossed the barrier into physical suffering. Pinching and flicking were the, now looking back seeming gracious, vile treatment that later grew into punches and kicks and slapping around. Blacks and blues and greens swirled his pasty skin like paint stretched across an empty canvas. Gone are the days were orphans sang Annie songs with fingers clasped together in a barrier of friendship... These guttersnipes were the berries on the bush of orphans, barely considered poisonous yet they caused such an awful stomachache to most. 

 

 

There were little, pricking thorns in the bush that injured its neighbors; they caused complications throughout every day just as much as the next bush. More specifically, two boys tended to stray towards the darker side of things. Surely, this isn't too terribly complicated to guess at, just as the last 'surprising' realization. In factually everything they had ever participated in, the homeless boys were outcast. The eldest of the two never had  _too_  much of an issue finding some way of wiggling his being inside of the whole and away from the outskirts. Sherlock, moreover, always found it troubling to _piece_  his place into whatever puzzle board appeared before them next. Whether it was the  _troublemaker_ , the  _instigator_ , the  _know-it-all_ , or the  _freak_ , Sherlock never clung to just one particular adjective. He was a combination of the four, and many believe that was why he had not fit it, because he never limited himself to just one, boring characteristic. That statement remains both true and false in a manner. People remain living and striving for themselves; they are not just containers of organs running themselves because  _instructed_  to. Humans are so very, very complicated; they have so much happening inside their minds that they cannot conceive that it doesn’t matter what happens among the others. People will always have something to fret and complain about. Sherlock Holmes was a person, just as true but just as denied as the idea that he was a child. He feared, he imagined, he thought, he fretted. His life is one giant bowl of struggling, whether anyone believed so or otherwise, but he hid it well.  

 

 

Mycroft Holmes, on the other hand, was never convinced that he was human. He fancied believing he was a superior to everyone. He thought himself someone that could do anything without petty human tendencies to slow him down. The undemanding actuality was that he, indeed, was a human. His status as the heartless teenager with the intelligence of eighty-year-old scholars had not helped the adoption dilemma, though. No family wanted an arrogant child to call them imbeciles at every mistake. The Holmes boys had that quandary recurrently, that revolting factor that shoved people away rather than snare them in. Mycroft, every once in a while, perched himself alone and pondered little notions. His bed lay in the dusty corner of the wing, opposite of the pests that weren't in his line of vision at the time. A shadow cast over him from the burnt out fluorescent light that creaked about him when drafts course through. His knees leaned against the wall in slack and head stopped low with effortlessness. He usually remembered the one thing he never found pleasant. The one no one spoke of, the  _accident_. He recalled receiving the dizzying phone call from inside the manor's kitchen...

 

 

_Originally, he had been preparing dinner alongside the house chef. His hand clutched the phone tighter to his ear as every word broke through perfect silence. No breath escaped the lips of the boy, no sound emitted from either end. Silence. Sherlock had finally happened to skip by with a flustered air about him, stopping when he sensed the strange omen secreting to his left. Soft footsteps turned toward him and his brother's mind whirled with observations. He recollected hearing his brother shout at him with aggravation before snatching the phone before he could react. His hands then found themselves trembling. He remembers seeing his brother slam the phone through the wall's plaster, bruising his knuckles. Police sirens became clearer as they drove up the winding way with a mission to receive the two and lead them to the police station to discuss matters. A man named Jack led them reassuringly through the events. Questions and propositions were firing out from men in the front seats, scrambling to reason with the bawling little ball of curls beside him in the cruiser. An arm wrapped around that boy's shoulders, hugging him into his side._  This was the first instance; the very first time Sherlock had opened his door to emotions. 

 

 

_Now in the remembered morgue, a scream of melancholy, which wasn't his, echoed around his head as he watched his dearest brother sprint forth to the two bodies covered by thin, moth-eaten sheets. Restraints placed on the two of them, Mycroft was unaware that he had even ran in the trail of his younger sibling. Images stopped transmitting once the flash of him and Sherlock, standing outside the first 'home' with suitcases stuffed full, flew by..._ Never did the tears welling in his iceman eyes ever fall down. The brim was never overfilled. It never fully exceeded. 

 

 

The only other being that could detect Mycroft's moody states was his brother, of course. Sherlock always tended to notice when the sulking mound that was his dear brother was upset.  _Don't touch, don't speak, and don’t stare_ , Sherlock never apposed memories of what his sweet mother whispered to him whenever Mycroft came home from the academy after disappointing father. Her voice was catalogued and cached; her words were like dripping honey unable to ever fully forget, which never grew tiring to swallow. Their father, oppositely, pressured them to bulk up and handle whatever thrown at them. They both thought him an utter idiot, seeing as he was the only Holmes in the house that didn't surpass the intelligence the others were famous for conceiving. In reality, father Holmes was the only, normal, one that could relate to anyone and often saved the whole family from humiliation on public. Mycroft regretting never connected with his father more than he ever tried to as he looked back. 

 

 

"Mycroft, Steven is requesting -” The youngest of the family strutted through the metal doors leading into the corridor. He held what looks to be a bent fork, folded at the center. Immediate words slowly died down as his eyes averted the compromised sibling. Quick movements retreated backwards into unknown places until he was alone yet again. _I’m probably late for supper, how... uninteresting_ , he sneered inside of his head, releasing an audible groan. He straightened his back, painful numbness soaring across his muscles, and swung his legs over the side of the mattress. He quickly straightened the wrinkles that had formed across his polo and stood with swift movements. Dusting what looked like noting from black trousers, he stared at the wall in thought for a moment. His reveries slotted, his young brother storming back through the doors with a notable frown and attitude surrounding him as flies on scraps.

 

 

"Never mind that, Dan Lambert, he told us not to show." His small, attenuated body fell formlessly onto creaky springs that threatened to tear through the mattress's thin covering. Mycroft scoffed appropriately, laying a protective hand across his abdomen. The other boy's fingers found themselves glued together under his chin, eyes closed and scowl evident. No movement radiated from either of them for moments before Mycroft finally let out a scarce huff. 

 

 

"Who is God's name are you talking about? More important than who, rather why are you bumbling about them?"

 

 

"The man, Steven, you imbecile. He opines that since we can't bother to be on time arriving at the hall, then we shan't bother to arrive at all." Mycroft muttered something incoherent and sat himself back down. The bed dented inward towards the intrusion, dipping low. Sherlock snickered at his insecure brother on the bed beside his own. 

 

 

"Steven? His name is Stanley, brother." Mycroft began, sighing as his stomach timidly rumbled out of hunger. His mind started to scratch at the idea forming inside of his head, his face contorting in grief, "Soon enough, it won't matter anyway”.

 

 

Sherlock didn't catch the small whisper following the reassertion, so he popped his eyelids open and glanced towards the elder. A quick, muttered statement left his lips, "What was that?" 

 

 

"Nothing, brother, I said nothing at all." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Daniel Lambert was an animal breeder known for his large, burly size! haha thought i'd explain who he was!


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft sets his plan in motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoo! i am proud to announce a three thousand word chapter

The pitter-patter of hurried footsteps swiftly flowed through the barren halls. The shadow of a taller boy waltzed across the hollow walls, seeming rushed and late for some unknown event. Silhouettes flickered and stretched and weaved through the light spaces emitted from opened doors lining the corridor. His head snapped back and forth searching for faces or sounds or anything that might abruptly stop his progress down to the main boys' dormitories. No one was in sight, for all children outside playing in the foreign warm air in the trees and dirt and fresh air, and few employees were residing inside of the building because of the humid, hot quarters. This tall boy finally shoved the rusted metal doors open and allowed them to noisily slam behind him. His precise hands flowed effortlessly with easy and brisk movements. He squatted next to his old bed with a puff of effort and heavy breathing and then scrambled to clasp the handle of his suitcase. He finally grasped the damned item and tugged it out and onto the bed, allowing it to bounce around minutely. As it settled, he removed his short, pristine stack of clothes he had acquired over the few years being 'home'-less, to say. The oversized waistcoat he cherished was set on the side for further wearing use. Still having other items to fit inside, he compiled the pile into the corner of the [bag](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1158575/chapters/2410456).

 

 

Precisely snapping the closet [doorknob](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1158575/chapters/2410456) to the right, the closet being almost directly next to his sleeping quarters, Mycroft dug through the thick layer of burly winter coats and worn-down, muddy shoes to retrieve a box at the very bottom, left corner of the space. Tugging it through the tangled mess, he quickly slammed the door and placed the box on his bed. The dented-in sides creased with time and the tape that was once sticky then hung limply from the [openings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1158575/chapters/2410456). Plucking the folded lids away with ease, he revealed his dirty little pleasure. On a normal understanding, none of the Holmes residents collected much of anything, other than maybe a death toll but that is for later upbringing, and Mycroft seemed to be the last one left - alive - that really had one of these rare things. His favorite little trinket to hide away to himself was, to everyone's much great surprise here, candles. This must he radiating some strange thoughts and opinions but the reasoning for this specific collection was beautiful to those who knew of it. His guilty pleasure was indeed candles for a multitude of reasons. He basked in the scents and smells each provided when lit with a small spark, and the strange dance of light and warmth the flame gave off when softly blow across. The flickering light softly lit small regions with gentleness and delicacy, and the little shadows they cast when in the dark sent Mycroft into an infatuated frenzy after them. Later, much later, he will stumble to discover what his brother so dearly collected. 

 

 

Carefully picking up his pillow, Mycroft withdrew a photo of his parents and brother in front of the manor when he was a younger lad. Their parents, younger and less… wrinkled hadn’t yet adapted to the surrounding area with clothes all eccentric and laced and velvet. Mycroft often chuckled at how mundane they acted at times. Usually numb to feelings, he rather cleared his throat with earnest at his train of thought chugging in the northern direction of sentiment. He silently wished he could go back for only a while to simpler days before everything started becoming complicated. He tucked the thought and the photo into his luggage carrier in the front most pocket to hide it away. Pulling the covers back and folding them over, he yanked out his warmer winter clothing he had snatched from the Rector's facilities, lined with thick cotton. Keep in mind most of the boys’, Mycroft and Sherlock, clothes were stolen and patched and hand-me-downs. His favorite umbrella laid nearby, tied up the center with a black show string left over from previous years of use. He then stomped across the spacious area to the cupboard where he stashed cans and liquid bottles in the small, locked door that no one knew of. Piling the food and water up in his arms and shirt, he left it unlocked with the key atop the threshold, no bothering to clean up his disturbance among the other knocked-over, canned goods. Stumbling back to the trunk, he allowed the heavy ensemble of clinking canisters to fall into the luggage atop the clothes and ‘color in’ the empty spaces. Organizing the cannery in order of name and then shade, he barely had enough space left required for the final ingredient of the brewing recipe. 

 

 

From under his bed once more, he leant down with a gruff grump of endeavor. He lowered down to his knees and scanned the underside of the bed for the traces of the item he sought. Eventually he spotted the torn, lazily sewn up fabric nearly a week ago. His hand reached shoulder-deep to wiggle around, then skimmed the edge of the paper, and firmly gripped at it. Tearing the seams without care, Mycroft exposed his wad of money that he had been saving since they arrived. His mind stuttered instantly when he noticed a lack of weight that was resting in his palm felt lighter than it had previously. Someone had taken a small sum of the stack, cutting the worth nearly to half.  _Somebody... some halfwit stole my earnings!_ His panic echoed through his head and pumped against his ears, and he was sure anyone within a few meters would be able to hear his worry coursing through him. He fell to the dirty, dusty floor once more, ignoring the pain running up his knee and thigh, climbing beneath the bed to search for the missing item. The hole, stretching a foot wide, in the mattress had only mere fluff and stuffing that migrated into puffs over the years. His breathing quickened when he rose back to his feet, head reeling.  _No, no, no!_  The thing that made his heart stop pumping altogether though was the voice breaking out of someone standing precariously closely behind him. 

 

 

"It didn't take me but an hour to piece together your plan, brother." Mycroft's chest thumped with guilt and knowingness and he couldn't turn around; he couldn't will himself to face what he knew was waiting. For a moment, he almost allowed himself to ask when that hour had taken place, or how long he had known his dirty plan. His head dropped against his chest, his chin folding against itself to his demise. His lips were moving; trying to shape the words, he so desperately needed to brood, but none of those thoughts left his chapped mouth. This left blank silence. Sherlock shuffled from the place his peripheral vision could not scan and then started tapping his foot with annoyance. "You should have  _at least_  mentioned it to me." 

 

 

Sherlock's muffled words were emerging from below his mess of curls that shadowed over his features. Mycroft finally grabbed a handful of his hair, running thick fingers through the thinning follicles, and he muttered profanities under his breath as he spun around on his heel, facing the inevitable. His eyes stared in the direction of the windows, unable to graze the grave of his dearest brother's intense stare. Streaks of light leaped through closed blinds, painting the floor in lines and figures. The money, still pinned to his palm, was stuffed his pocket alongside his hand and left it there, the limb sweating profusely. He desperately attempted to make poker of his face, failing rather harshly. His sibling was staring through dark hair hanging over his eyebrows, inky bags swooping below his hateful eyes. The scowl etched through his features was tired, upset, and held emotions that Mycroft wasn't even aware that the boy possessed. His fist crinkling the money was slightly shaking or trembling, for which the accused did not know. Sherlock began towing his way forward, looking discreetly at the cash before throwing it to splatter against Mycroft's chest. Each thin piece strayed in opposite directions, falling gracelessly to the wooden floorboards in unorganized scatter. 

 

 

"Why?" The simple question was so much larger than it appeared, "Why are you going to abandon me inside of this prison when you promised not to?" The anger bounced around the walls, pushing the backs of Mycroft's knees to the metal frame supporting the bed. His balance almost gave out if it weren't for the hand ripping from deep inside his pocket to grab hold the wall. The younger brother's nostrils flared at accelerating speed, pupils dilating larger to smaller, unable to decide whether to narrow or broaden, and his body visibly shook with everything imaginable. "Have you already forgotten that day? Have you already discarded the words that you muttered when we stood in front of that awful -?”

 

 

The loud voice cracked at the end, breaking into unbearable sounds that were weeps and groans and screams shooting from Sherlock's lungs. The sounds were shattering and Mycroft couldn't move; he stood paralyzed, frozen, and stapled to the floor with guilt, an unfamiliar feeling. Sherlock began pounding tiny fists into his gut, kicking his legs at his brother's calves and feet and beating the energy out of him. The eldest didn't oppose, he didn't stop the pain that filled his limbs and torso. When his younger sibling finally stopped, his hands were flexing and stretching the digits out. The knees of the boy held scrapes, from the outdoors no doubt, but the black around his eye was not a shadow. It was a bruise.  _Oh, not again._  

 

 

"You can't possibly understand -” Mycroft attempted to reason, attempted to see the wound closed to heal. He reached to lift the boy's chin to examine the healing wound, causing a repulsed Sherlock to step away from his brother. 

 

 

"That's rich, Vlad III, are you going to boil me now?" He laughed, cutting himself off with a straight, angry face, "Are you planning to skin me for yelling against you, for hating you?" Sherlock retorted his anger sizing up against Mycroft's height, causing the latter boy to feel shrunken and small. The insults Sherlock had been bowling with lately were knocking down the pins of emotions within Mycroft, growing cleverer by the second. "Or were you scheming to mimic John Cabot and vanish -” 

 

 

"Sherlock, calm yourself down." Mycroft moved to lay a reassuring hand on the scrawny boy's shoulder, cutting the sentence off abruptly. Sherlock jerked back though at the advancement, glaring at his brother even more intensely. Knives seemed to cut through the other boy’s being, chopping him like fine vegetables going into stew. His brother's soft footsteps retreated towards the door until his back pressed against the cool surface harshly, scrambling away from his elder with urgency. 

 

 

"You were - you are - plotting to walk out on me, scheming to leave me behind at this terrible place." His voice wasn't forgiving in the slightest and his eyes were pleading against his own body's language. The straight line that was his back's profile stood tall against his height's will, forcing Mycroft to respect how large the boy could make himself in a given situation. The minute flickers and twitches emitted from his brother were shouting louder than actual words would, making his shudder. 

 

 

"Understand, little brother,  _what_  my stratagem is meant to accomplish will overall -”

 

 

“What’s that, Adephagia? I apologize but I can’t seem to catch what you’re huffing through those layers of fat,” Sherlock streamed the harsh insult through gritted teeth, smiling like a chimp at his brother. The grin looked so unnatural it would probably scare any bystanders. Mycroft merely shook his head in irritation, growing weary of the boy’s incompetence. He simply muttered a sting of words incoherent to Sherlock, “Maybe if you removed your abnormally large mind from your… immaturity is increasingly unbearable… stop arguing brother, it is of no further use.”

 

The last words that slipped through his lips were loud enough to echo off the wooden walls for mere seconds. Sherlock then froze from his jittery, anxious twitches to still, pristine nothingness. Rolling eyes snapped to the tall form slouching against his uncomfortably tight jumper, taking in the worried sight his brother propelled. A seven-pound lump rose through his throat to lodge itself, for then this lonely boy had finally come to the late conclusion that this in fact was not a game for making wrong moves and mistakes only to call rematch and start over again with a clean slate. This whole conundrum was a real life situation, and now, sadly, his only brother was leaving him.

 

 

"Just stop, please, for I am growing increasingly upset. Do not treat me as if I am one of these dumb arseholes. Leave then and don't come back for me, if you were even planning to." Sherlock spoke words as a scholar might to a highly educated classroom of progressing geniuses. He pronounced each word with painful accuracy and didn't allow one slip of stuttering to seep through. His words held nothing but morbid hatred projected forth at everything in his sights. If the room filled with flowers and this was a cartoon world of sorts, the daisies and roses would curl and wilt into themselves as Sherlock stepped by them. His hate forced a wall to build up in between the two, brick by brick, diminishing every hint of bonds that tangled together with the last years' events. Every strung up bond that had stitched itself then snipped and Sherlock had no intention on sewing them back up. 

 

 

"Brother -” Mycroft endeavored to make peace before ‘walking out’, but Sherlock had already dramatically kicked the doors open, hitting the metal against the concrete walls of the hallway. A loud crash sounded, ignored by him. The figure retreated to the tallest tree of the grounds that only he had mastered and climbed. The slim boy slipped into black shadows, and the doors closed as he grew smaller and smaller. Mycroft just stared after him, aiming to gather himself. Before long, without even realizing his body had inched away, the luggage was packed and stuffed and his coat thrown over his polo shirt. Mycroft pocketed the money that was scattered across the dark boards inside of his deep waistcoat pockets. The umbrella he held dear, after Sherlock purchased it for him two summers ago on the rainiest day they'd experienced, was resting comfortably in his palm. He straightened his clothing, looking superior to any peers and strut down the corridor with ease, sneaking around the guards and security that loitered halls. He finally reached the sidewalk at the front of the orphanage, walking calmly but briskly down the path towards the gates. The turnstile brought grim memories back and he  _forced_  them through to the back of his mind, straining the chains and slipping through with a great deal of toil. His bigger figure barely squeezed his way through the small space, tugging his bag behind him slowly. 

 

 

Mycroft had summoned a cab a few hours prior, requesting to schedule the arrival three hours from that moment.  _Right on time it seems to be indeed_ , he mused. His head tilted up in a jerk in greeting, heavily allowing his body to fall onto the worn out, fabricated seats that smelled of the pine air freshener that wagged around the rear view mirror. The disgusting seating left the boy, man nearly, uncomfortable and scrambling to only allow necessary parts to make contact with the arrangement. The pictures taped to the windshield were stickers, memories, and pocketed knick-knacks. The tacky, furry pair of dice swayed as the cabbie accelerated or turned. The only item of interest in the 'mundane' cab was the can of miniature circular pins that chimed to-and-for, almost over filing the old, used sweet corn can. Each pin held a different image or wording, collecting different memories that the man apparently held dear. Another tasteful item that Mycroft snagged his mind onto was the perfectly full box of Marlboros barely visible inside the man's pocket.  _No, leave the cigarettes for it's a deficient habit. Moreover, it's a bad wont to practice in front of_ - Mycroft thought back nearly fifteen minutes anterior hopping inside of the cab. The letter he'd strategically placed within Sherlock's notebook as to permit his hot head to cool off for quite a while. Mycroft had figured well enough from experience that Sherlock would avoid people he disliked and things he enjoyed participating in for a few days to allow him to sulk and pout. By the twilight of the week the boy should have detected, and possibly looked over, the text that Mycroft had spent a measly ten minutes scribbling. Grant, at least he had tried to stitch the seams a little considering the intense argument that occurred right before hand. Mycroft barely allowed a lid to bat at these thoughts, staring heartlessly out his cab door’s window.

 

 

' _Dearest Sherlock,_

 

_I regret to inform you that upon my leave, you remain in the reckless care of the orphanage. Alas, I will return. I never intended to anger you as much as occurred, and my final progress will improve both of our lives as where I can free you. Sentiment isn't my area, as it isn't yours, and my greatest apology is saying 'I am sorry'. Believe me as much as you will. I've left the secret cupboard open for your use it needed and please, please don't allow yourself to crumble. My plan shan’t written for if you lose this, then I shall return to the home by force. All I say to you is that I will be back for you. Do try to stray from trouble, youngest boy. Remember what mother said; I hope you do forgive me eventually.'_

 

 

_Your brother, MH’_

 


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote the last couple of paragraphs in the chapter to check that out, but the general idea is mainly the same. The next might be a little late but i might change the update day to Sunday and give you guys an extra chapter this week, but I haven't decided yet.

Chilled night air nipped playfully at Mycroft's nose, causing the very tip of the skin to transform into a bright red coloring. A similar gust of air swooped down, ruffed inside of his tight waistcoat, and knitted hat, and then it continued to prick the skin on his neck and ears and face altogether, therefore resulting in [major](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1158575/chapters/2476024) discomfort. The swirling, twisting gale transformed his warm, steady composure into a shivering, shaking bundle of cloth slowly freezing over. Mycroft, seeing as he stood directly outside of the windowsill in which he would be located for the following few months, was snagged between two very delicious looking [options](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1158575/chapters/2476024). Number one included completely giving into persistent temptations and trudging back to the orphanage, resulting in disappointment from himself and Sherlock, eventually in the end. The latter, number two, included a small step forward that would propel him across the wooden threshold into the dim, unknown hallway. The building in question had no decision as to whether or not classified as dangerous or friendly in Mycroft's mind yet. The decision was thrust into his head by nature's cold breathe when another breeze galloped down the alleyway and drew his woolen coating up, as if tugging him along to follow it to a mysterious destination.  _Damn_ , he muttered to himself, clutching at his jacket hastily. The cold became far too much for his already shaking hands and nearly frostbitten toes to handle much longer. His breathe rapidly formed puffs of steam that dispersed thinly as he scooted the luggage case behind him. Bouncing wheels clattered on the cement stairs behind him, echoing vibrantly in the empty alley he left in the dust behind him. Glancing at the keycard he had received minutes prior, he noted the state of the card and challenged his mind to solve the puzzle of who had previously owned his flat before he had arrived. Once inside, the whole situation of finding the room was far different from the process he had usually used, and he struggled to [navigate](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1158575/chapters/2476024) through the labyrinth of corridors and stairways.

 

 

On any given basis, Mycroft would’ve scanned the halls and used his knowledge of architecture to spread a map through his mind and pinpoint a broad location of his set destination. Nearly eighty percent of the time, he was exactly on the spot. Even with his extended knowledge, Mycroft could very well not make his way about the colossal building, as there were too many variables, back-ways, and distractions.  _How are there no signs or people to give some sense of direction in this establishment?_ As he wandered, he noticed small glimpses of life stuttered from beneath the old, wooden doors. With the few doors he had passed he’d heard yells towards children to finish supper; commercials on televisions advertising useless products; lovers or not allowing muffled moans to escape; miniature animals scratching at the cracked paint on doors, every little noise radiating from the rooms. Regret pushed farther into Mycroft's mind with each step into the belly of the beast, forcing him to skip to the next feeling available to cling to and it was confusion. This gangly man, who would never admit it of course, simply could not find one staircase that didn't directly lead to the basement or fail to reveal the door leading to the fifth floor. Considering the elevators were worn and flickering on their last days, he steered rather clear of their presence and use. With suitcase trailing closely behind him across the flattened, dirty carpeting, he finally managed to locate the farthest flight placed at the very back corner of the building. 

 

 

"I cannot imagine which one of these people installed this stairwell in the very hind area of this...  _abode_." He grumbled with sarcasm and irritation, reaching to twitch the doorknob open. Before his fingertips could even make the smallest contact with the reflecting surface, a shadow appeared out of the corner of his eye in a fashion he remembered from days beforehand. This figure, just as similarly, began speaking and his heart sank, as he realized who the person could never be. 

 

 

"You'd be best off to take to the stairs up at the front." He whispered almost, not making any dangerous moves towards Mycroft, just standing wearily. The small slip of his mind going to his last confrontation with his brother vanished, "This 'case is used by mosts of the violent peoples livin’ in here”“." The lack of grammar skills scratched deep into the taller man's brain, desperately attempting to claw his lips open and to insult the hell out of the man behind him. Quickly spinning around with his keys wedged between his fingers in a defensive manner, he nodded curtly with tight lips towards the man and tried to walk past him without making physical contact. Before taking three brilliant strides, Mycroft remembered the minute fact that he had no idea as to which way he should navigate. As if sensing distress, the short, younger man slid past him and waved a gentle hand communicating to follow behind. To a slightly confused and mainly worried Mycroft, the man seemed to know his way about the building, turning down hallways and skimming through passages with ease. A few rights, some choice lefts, and a jump through a short stairway sent Mycroft reeling trying to keep up and to memorize the directions, only to fail quite miserably. The building was too large and mazelike to even begin to imagine finding his way through to the outside world every day. When the man stopped, the follower accepted an arm of direction stretched towards the dark corridor that was a flight of steps. Directly to the right was a man sleeping behind the counter with a mug of alcohol resting precariously on the edge of the wood. His snores startled Mycroft, who seemed to leap towards the staircase. Darkness loomed like a thundercloud over the last few steps, making them appear eerie. A gulp of disgust and a fake-smile of fake-gratitude later, Mycroft found himself slowly beginning to climb the way up the stairs of this horridly displeasing place. To distract his wandering thoughts, he pointed out every little error in his head to himself. All deep cracks in the olive colored walls, all unlabeled stains worn into the cheap carpet, and all pieces of information stored itself inside of Mycroft’s head, cataloguing if you will.

  

 

Finding the numbered door three corners over and then four doors back, Mycroft walked as slowly as his sprinting mind would allow him, desperate to seek out what  _adventures_  this new home would file in store for him. Upon approach of this cracking, red door, his nose turned upward, sniffing a putrid odor of alcohol, body odor, and pot into his stream of breathing. Hurried coughs forced themselves through his mouth from surprised lungs, loading the hall in a fit of almost-choking coughs. An arm swooped up to cover his nostrils from the poisonous scent as he knocked into the wall many times over before reaching his apartment.  _I’m in number one hundred eighty-nine on floor five in the building._   _Number 189-5, familiar_ , he mused silently allowing a small smirk of déjà vu to slip across his lips in an unattractive, unsightly fashion. Numbers were always his favorite thing to categorize and somehow the number appeared eerily similar to something he had seen before and not knowing was itching at his mind. The somewhat hideous grin disappeared instantly when a man from across the hall fumbled out of his room, stumbling into the hall with a thick, and very evident, puff and smell of marijuana following closely. If any sort of imagery would have helped explain, simply imagine a dragon emerging from behind a door suddenly, breathing smoke all over you, and grinning like Cheshire cat. The stew dispersed into the air, causing Mycroft’s hand to twitch up to his face without his consent, and the gesture almost came off as rude to the other being in the hall. The man was smiling stupidly, conscious but not comprehending. Tobacco covered fingers raised lazily to grasp Mycroft’s shoulder in an attempt to keep him in an upright position with all the swaying he had been doing. Little to his amusement, Mycroft slipped away and removed the keys jingling in his pocket to wedge them in between him fingers, again defensive. The falling man caught the edge of the border of the wall, barely managing to lift his own obese weight off the floor. His smile turned down into a grimace of anger and he pointed a stubby, orange-stained finger in the general direction of the sneaky man before him.

 

 

“You bastard!” He screamed, not seeming to bother anyone else at within the hallway what so ever. This must be a ritual of sorts, simply routine, Mycroft reasoned, bracing his umbrella in his left hand, handling keys firmly in his right hand’s grip, and dropping the handle of his trunk to the floor with a small thud. The point of the umbrella was the only thing that would harm the man rather harshly; the other items might’ve served as a distraction though. Although, thinking through his weapon choice available at the time, the keys were the sharper, jagged items that could help him take down an easier opponent. The staggering man finally uplifted himself to his feet without balance, nearly toppling over right there in the middle of the corridor. Instead, his fists clenched to together tightly, swinging backwards to pack a power-filled punch towards Mycroft. Before even starting to build any potential energy, he started to slack, droop, and fall forwards from leaning too far. The frown switched like a light from angry to joyous and the grin was starting to gnaw into Mycroft's mind uncomfortably. The smile reached the corners of the man's eyes, crinkling the fat up as he began to speak. "It ain't worth the trouble." 

 

 

Mycroft let his hands ease around the objects he held and then slowly lowered his raised arms. The arm raised to puncture him was then scratching away at the cloth barely covering his stomach. Stains and patches and stitches patterned the originally white tee shirt in an unflattering fashion. "So”, he began, belching immediately after and then blowing the air lazily in the general direction of the taller, irritated man. "How long've you been a'livin' here?" He asked in a southern United States accent. Telling by the particular twang in which he carried, Mycroft guessed rather accurately that he was from Georgia. The odor he was portraying proudly was starting to blur his mind of clear thoughts; unraveling whatever smart comeback he had previously mustered. Blinking far too many times, he twisted his head and stared down the hall. The edges of his sight were stirring and the corridor appeared to stretch on forever. Two fists curled over his eyes and rubbed furiously, haphazardly attempting to clear the sense he needed. Before opening his closed eyes, he abruptly cleared his tightening throat. 

 

 

"I have just arrived, but this is none of your concern. Now please, if you will, I must be getting on my way." Mycroft sent a condescending smile in the direction of the man, whose name was still unknown, and spun on his heel towards his door. Quickly squatting uneasily to grasp at his luggage case, he held onto the handle as he searched his trousers for the keycard. The man could easily be heard breathing loudly from behind him, his lungs seeming to struggle for air.  _Lazy pothead_ , Mycroft muttered to himself as he finally realized that his key wasn't residing in his pocket. Panic washed over him subtly as he glanced over his shoulder at the overweight man standing behind him still. The man started to giggle slightly, then leaning against his own door lazily. Arms crossed over his chest and leg bent up against the wood, he smiled wearily at Mycroft, who was screaming inside. "You dropped it, smart-ass." 

 

 

The man spoke from over his shoulder, turning the knob to his room and starting to retreat. Mycroft snapped back to face the man, who was holding the card tightly between his index finger and thumb, grinning from ear to ear. His chewed fingernails were yanking the car down to stuff into the large pocket on the bum of his sweatpants. Mycroft stepped forward without realizing, snatching the man's wrist tightly enough to cause discomfort and twisted it to awkwardly bend. He spun him around and pinned the arm mid back to cut off an attack back on him. The other arm was crushing the tips of sharp keys into his chest from behind, digging the jagged edges through the shirt. The fat body in front of Mycroft froze with fear, still discombobulated but slowly coming back from his state of dizziness. Mycroft's temper, in which he had never been able to control very well and was often warned about, forced his to shake violently and turned his face a terrible shade of red. Constricting his grip ever so slowly, he was eventually crushing the tendons and bones in the man's arm, a painful cry erupting loudly. With irritation and aggravation laced through his words like silk, he inched closer to the man's ear, whispering with hate, "Is that true, now?"

 

 

The man, fully aware then, tried to struggle against Mycroft's surprisingly sharp hold trapping him in. The keys pushed harder into his fat covered stomach, buds of blood finally peeking through the skin. The corpuscles streak down his belly, where the shirt hung over loosely, and they stained the shirt even more so than previous substances. "Now tell me, would you happen to have any knowledge of where the card might be at the moment?" The man nodded too quickly, trying to will himself to relax in the corrupt situation. His breath was ragged and uneven as he slowly reached not-twisted arm behind to his back pocket to retrieve the cold, rectangular card. With trembling fingers, he allowed Mycroft to snatch the object away before slanting backwards and releasing the man from his restricting grip. The man stumbled forward, then angry and upset. He pressed chubby fingertips to the blood and stared before raising his eyes to glare at the tall man in the hallway. "You little shit!" He yelled, raising an arm to shut the door beside him. Before closing the crack to his smelly, poisonous apartment, he muttered a quick insult somewhere along the lines of 'pompous ass' before slamming the door. A room or two down, a woman with a voice as shrill as a whistle screamed for the, and to quote,  _fucking noise stop disturbing her afternoon tea!_  Mycroft shared in awe at the single woman, scratch that, person who sounded to be alive in the whole building. After gaping for a moment towards the direction the sound had echoed from, he slumped forward over the doorknob and key slot to where he could unlock the door easily. Slipping the key inside quickly and yanking back harshly, the green light dully illuminated from underneath the gunk and grim of previous owners. His hand twitched, unlocking the door and shoving in inward. Stumbling at the speedy swing the door entailed, he tripped forwards over his bulky bag he had forgotten was laying peacefully on the greasy and thin carpet. The key skidded towards a door to his right, slipping under the crack three quarters of the way. He groaned at his knees had slammed into the hard floor, surely leading to bruising in the nearer future. He pushed his arms under his to gain leverage and shoved upwards, pain spiking through him. Sliding feet underneath him slowly, he began to uplift himself and reassemble the composure he prided himself on. His head ached and his throat suddenly became sore, but he tugged his bag inside enough to close the door lightly with a click. His hands dizzily scanned the wall for a switch, scraping and feeling around for the nubs. Finally reaching a farther off one to his left, he flicked the plastic upwards and prepared for the blinding light to burn his retinas. Instead, the light flickered over and over and over until finally settling on a dim illumination that barely lit the hand in front of his face. Forgetting about his key card shortly, he staggered through the next threshold to an area tiled on the floor. Grim and guck filled the cracks, hadn’t appeared as though mopped at all. A counter separated the even smaller living area from the kitchen. The area that held all the outlets and a single couch seemed considered the bedroom for a bed pulled down from the wall and made a makeshift bed for Mycroft. Even though the situation wasn't exactly five stars, he was grateful for the home and warmth at that moment. Still throbbing through his head, he blinked more times than needed and continued to examine the rest of the murky flat.  

 

 

With a sudden, slapping apparition, a scent fowler than the mess of pot and drugs sprayed out like perfume at a clothing shop. His nose retreated with disgust, forcing his arm to cover the sensitive skin once more. A quick scan of the immediate living quarters and closet revealed nothing worth worrying his mind with at that moment, and he found himself waltzing inside to examine the room to his best interest. Cigarette smoke could never mask this scent, he concluded, trying to imagine a product of cleansing that might be of service in the smell department. The windows on the opposite side of him were even dirtier than the floors and could never have allowed any light through enough to allow any seeing abilities. Pinching his nose as a small child might at nasty food or stinky smells, his footsteps were absorbed by something in the walls, making any transfer of room-to-room sound almost none. That one feature was one of the few impressive qualities the flat possessed. Tripping over a ridge in the carpet, his face almost connected with the tiles stacked atop what meant to be a bathroom floor. His hands caught himself though, allowing wisps of terribly horrid air to fill every inch of his lungs and making his reflex of gagging activate instantly. His throat tightened and his stomach clenched, churned before pushing his meager lunch up and out onto the already disgusting flooring. The wretched scent and sight revolted him. He crawled on the almost cleanly, cold tiles to the sink to help him heave his body upright while tightly slamming an arm over his breathing sensors. His foot nearly slipped in the slick liquid of his own stomach acid and food, but he caught the countertop before slamming down again. 

 

 

As he rose to his feet, a shadow illuminated from behind the dank curtain shielding the shower. He wouldn't have noticed if the lights from the living room hadn't peaked in illumination slightly. Panic shot out in bursts of aching numbness along with the creeping feeling of horror and the irresistible desire to yank the curtain back. Following the blind instinct, his hand gripped the plastic before pulling back to reveal a shadow looming in the corner. Whether the scents had blurred his vision or his mind refused to compute the data, he squinted to try to clear the image up. Remember, Mycroft was barely eighteen and he hadn't yet acquired the proper skills to block out shock and its symptoms. It almost appeared as a man to him before a sudden, mysterious light reflected a truly horrifying scenario laid down before this poor, young man in a flat he had barely acquired for an hour. Blood flooded the tub in about three inches, hand and fingerprints painted the walls and area surround. The shadow in the shower was a man, a dead man at that. 

 


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for all the delay! I have been feeling like, for lack of the worse word, crap and have made some bad health decisions and I just needed a week or two to cool down and focus on school, but now it is Spring Break. Thank you for all of those who have left 'kudos' and just read this story. I might post to Wattpad too but I don't know.

"William! Will you get your ass down here so we can clean your mess up?" James screamed up the base of the tree, cupping two meaty hands around his mouth and chin to amplify the utterance. His hefty body was swaying from foot to foot from standing in the same position and spot for nearly twenty minutes. Irritation radiated towards the young sapling slumped against the branch of the large pine. The boy leered smugly, relentlessly twining his arms across his chest in defiance and jutting his chin towards the sky the slightest measure. His eyes narrowed to slits and his body stiffened to stillness. The already impatient man beneath the outstretched tree limbs was beginning to grow fatigued and was breathing heavily through his mouth in hot puffs.     

 

 

"My name”, Sherlock began smoothly, briefly nonplussed that his voice wasn't fractured, "you twit, has never been William. You are to address me by my chosen epithet,  _James_ ." His eyes closed promptly, pivoting his head to the side in a gesticulation of shunning. Before his sputtering, commenced its course, Sherlock lay back on the cracking branch and dangled precariously over the margins. His hair swirled about from the playful winds, tickling his face with small curls in the process. The leaves that remained on the twigs during the harsh winter were rustling against one another softly, emitting natural tunes relished by the young lad. For that, miniscule moment life was peaceful, which was rare to experience at his day. However, little things never lasted in his reality, and what was so special as to spare that day of the same fate? 

 

 

"Boy, you'd better just remember one thing: your pompous brother isn't here anymore. No one is gonna come to bail you out this time." James spat up at him, curling his fists up with the hem of his stained tee shirt. A vile grin stretched across his disgusting lips as Sherlock opened his eyes superficially and stared aimlessly at the darkening sky above. His moment of serenity demolished instantaneously and replaced with  _grief_  and  _anger_  and  _hatred_  and he needed to stop his emotions from clouding over judgment. With digits wrapped around the bough for balance, splitting fingernails dung into the tree bark. The snap of fingernails followed shortly by blood running down the sides of the offshoot. His jaw was almost painfully stringent, tightened firmly. The words screamed below drowned by the pressure behind his ears, caused by blood pounding through, and not clearly focused on hearing. Cells raced through his veins behind his skin, burning hot. He was pissed. 

 

 

"No." He murmured with wrath twined into his voice, trying to rebuild his unbearably placid state. He inhaled deeply, faltering breaths swarmed in through his nose and out through his mouth. Fingers slowly retracted seize of the innocent branch and went to straighten themselves palm to palm. The loud roar of blood no longer flooded his ears as he reinstalled his phlegmatic condition. The man below wasn't even paying him any attention anymore and continued to slander the boy, talking to no one in particular but rather enjoying the sound of his own insults. 

 

 

The man, James, down beneath Mister Holmes lost his straddling patience less than forty-five minutes prior when the boy had ran rowdily through the mess hall uttering profanities and curse words galore. Every four months, the home hosted a banquet for the children to meet new families thinking of adopting and to grow an understanding of things having to relate with their situation. This happening would have been the largest they'd ever seen in many years, past and present, and the Board and the Rector decided that the gathering had to be perfect down to the scummy shoelaces of each boy in the facility. As routine goes, the boys lined the corridor just external the anxiously waiting, to-be mothers and fathers. The head count ensued firsthand, ticking the names of each participant one by one. As soon as the process was finished, the next one started. The boys were to arrange themselves from tallest to shortest for an aesthetic appeal of the audience. No one ever really questioned the affair except for Sherlock, who, of course, was far too entertained inside of his head to begin to ruminate what was happening al fresco. 

 

 

_No mere peasant can afford extravagant I, Captain Holmes, so come yonder mortals, take your foremost swing!_

 

 

His voice swapped from a deep, throat tone to a high, mockingly panicked pitch.  _Oh, no! How are we ever going to trick the imbeciles into buying the finest specimen of pirate to roam the seven seas! We must make him look pretty; we must make the people buy the charade._

 

 

A stiff ram from behind sent the daydreamer crashing into the concrete wall to his left, angling his shoulder to twist awkwardly. Sherlock cussed silently, regaining his balance and trying to fish out the antecedent thoughts of adventure and freedom. He always had a knack for sealing the world from his pretentious mind and closing off the walls for him and him alone. Hours at a time, he pretended himself to be the rapturously ranked marauder captured by the British Army. Only, of course, with the pride he carried with himself on selling as an exorbitant bargain chip. Not able to muster up the same enthusiasm for his latest raid, he returned his mental state to present reality and watched blankly as the boys around him shuffled nervously. Tapping heels on the floor and drying palms on their trousers, the hype died to dull. The Rector, James, and another man stepped before the flock, conjuring their impressively stern faces.  _Failing_ , Sherlock added with an eye roll. They switched the job of speaking often, adding in side notes and snippets. Once finished with the tirade, plastic smiles covered their features and they spun to open the oversized doors. With a push and a swing, all eyes focused on the scrawny cluster of boys huddling in the entrance. It seemed that no one noticed when the thinnest boy ditched the bunch and skillfully concealed himself behind a decorative curtain meters away. James led the hesitant group forward, rushing a bit, to place them in the front of the hall to present them gracefully. The other man, whose name is not at all important, ushered from behind, smacking the lacking boys and whispered for them to speed it up through clenched teeth. As for the hiding inmate, an inside nickname he carried by himself, he carefully listened and waited for the perfect time to recede from his position. Sherlock had planned the ideal weeks beforehand; everything had gone according to plan other than the minute factor that his brother wouldn't be there to bail him out of his punishment yet again. This time, though, the boy would have to face everything  _alone_. He swallowed the straying thoughts and ran out from behind the swaying silk as soon as James muttered a simple  _thank you_ to one of the younger women in the crowd. His soft footsteps bounded off the walls of the hall, attracting everybody's attention to the blurry figure. His already disorderly appearance was frightening enough, but the small cuts and bruises peppering his limbs and the bone-slim figure he held were of transparent clarity. He smiled widely, flashing his fangs at the small children huddling behind their parents, and began to shout the dirtiest, most-revolting obscenities he had taken to storing in the closed off section of his mind. Over the course of eleven days, he had taken to collecting words for the perfect occasion, and what a turnout that day had been. The curses flew left and right, and they pierced the citizens lining the walls and stunned them frozen with gawking expressions. Then he ran through the exit doors at the far end of the vestibule, sending the silent escape alarms reeling and blaring and messaging the departments. Just like that, the memorable instant was over and just like that, Sherlock had disappeared to the tree.

 

 

The memory evaporated into the chilled air, straddling Sherlock back to the unfortunate reality. His dazed state had allowed James allotted time to finish his obedience escapade. Sherlock glanced down at an aggravated James, who was pacing below him now accompanied by a firefighter and bundle of police officers who had arrived shortly after the alarm sounded.  _That was rather speedy_ , he marveled without the slightest interest. The men beneath the stretching branches were peeking, pointing, and discussing in hushed tones. Seining his legs up to cross over the other, he maintained a sturdy, upright position that was more suitable for relaxing. He allowed his arms to slack with fatigue and to fall carelessly at his sides before resting his head harshly against the tree base, curls cushioning the blow. He scuttled to seal the cracks of his mind like plaster to a fissure in a wall, but there weren't enough distractions to completely blind his mind. The whispers jumping into the wind caught by his ears, making his soothing time near impossible. After countless attempts to derail the continuous train of thoughts from his head, he abandoned the bustle and focused back onto what the people below were planning to do with him. Snippets and fragments of sentences were floating through the air, only few snagging Sherlock's attention. The handful that had made their way up to his perked ears brought only news of bad endings  _because real life doesn't sustain happy ones_ , he grunted. The crowd below dispersed with slow nods towards the others, finally leaving James and another officer alone for the statement of his fate. The final word on the matter was spoken a few notches louder, as if beckoning him to eavesdrop further. The bobby was slowly receding to his car, backtracking while talking to James. Sherlock spun onto his stomach with fingers rested under his chin and he listened. He listened very closely. As the man stooped into his vehicle, the last sentence he spoke sent Sherlock’s eyebrows creasing slightly and fingers beginning to tremble. 

 

 

"-You just can't keep him here. He's  _toxic_ , Jim." Sirens faded into the distance.

 

 

 

*****

 

 

 Blaring sirens flooded the very same avenue in which the orphanage was located, stirring Sherlock’s thoughts minutely, but not enough to cause suspicion, as he was preoccupied with his own troubling reality. Eleven days had passed, hardly acknowledgeable or interesting, but on that final day, everything began to crumble for both of the brothers. Almost eighty miles south of the home and Sherlock, there was another man trembling. The journey to the flat building from that taxi ride hadn’t been particularly challenging, and that is why Mycroft figured that his luck had finally flipped the switch and dumped his pathetic figure into the gutter.

 

 

 Mycroft was stunned, traumatized more likely, but keeping himself composed was his best escape at that point. His blurred vision couldn’t latch onto the man’s body slit apart in his newly acquired bathroom. Hollow breaths sounded louder than a marching band at that point, deafening his hearing. The dark, swirling blood was too much for his mind to compute having never experienced anything that demented in his life. The arm shielding his nostrils fell heavily, awaking a fowl stench that pinched at the conscious parts of his mind. A firm hand grasped the counter meters behind him, trying to recollect his wits, and nearly causing him to collapse. The other limb had to clasp the slick shower curtains to haul his body from the stained tiles, widening the view of the corpse. Gurgling noises emitted from Mycroft’s throat, almost whimpering, and increased slightly as he continued to stare, mesmerized by the mutilation of the man. In itty hallucinations, the man twitched and shifted as if it were an old projected movie with flashing scenes. Whoever he was, his throat had been slit precisely, straight, and leaked small doses of blood at that point, probably almost fully drained. Mycroft’s dizzy vision began to clear, stilling. His eyelids, the dead man’s, peeled back as if staring aimlessly at a frightening figure directly to Mycroft’s right, clouded, and dead. His hands contorted, bracing himself against the shower tiles with bloodied digits. Blood surrounded his body and head, smothering him in red all over and just enough to conceal his naked body from peeking eyes. Mycroft could then see sufficiently clearly and attempted to swipe the plastic curtain back to completely hide the body. A shaking hand wiped his forehead for sweat, that hadn’t appeared, before curling back to tangle with his thin hair.

 

 

 _The phone_ , he thought,  _just… the phone._  His digits roamed through his pockets, all five of them, before finally managing to locate the cold device. The wobble of his hand made tasks nearly impossible, but after a moment or two of blindly trying to pry the phone to calling position, he eventually succeeded. The buttons and screen illuminated his face, casting an eerie shadow across his features. He looked like a mad man in that moment completely crazed and deranged. Steady thumbs rushed to press the correct keys, slipping slightly at the last number. A curse left his lips before he backtracked and retried. Holding the chilling plastic against his ear, he hummed alongside the tones of the dial with little equanimity. After three long, suspenseful buzzes, a woman answered the line.

 

 

“Scotland Yard, what is your emergency?” Her voice sounded like dripping honey, so sweet, heavy, and slacking. If the circumstances had been drastically different, Mycroft might’ve had his word with her displeased tone when speaking to such a disheveled person. Nevertheless, he opened his cracking lips to speak. Before a single grunt could release itself, his throat tightened painfully, cutting off his speech. Clearing his throat in earnest, he desperately tried to find the voice he needed to begin the explain things. No sounds came from his throat though other than the faint sound close to choking.

 

 

“Excuse me; please state how you need help.” She spoke again, now slightly more irritated. Mycroft glanced back at the tub, seeing the splattered, dried blood coating everything. The scent found him again, gagging him and causing him to hunch forward and heave. Copper and acid mixed with the stale smell the room had originally kept. “Please respond immediately, if not we will send someone to check on you regardless.” Mycroft couldn’t control anything anymore as he fell to his back harshly and let the phone slide down the side of his face. His hand loosened, gripping at his trousers and tightening with whitened knuckles. Lulling onto his side, he crumpled into a scrawny bundle of suit and bone. Legs curled into his chest as far as possible and curved his back into the shift. By the end of the movement, his head stooped between his knees with arms encasing the two thin limbs. Thoughts shifted to Sherlock, whispering to him that everything was his own fault that he and his brother were alone. The voice chewed at his mind, toying relentlessly with his mental stability at that moment. For what seemed an eternity, he laid slackened without anything keeping him from drowning.  _Pathetic, you are pathetic._

 

At last, there were footsteps around him, thumping loudly against the carpeted flooring sending jolts of pain through his head. Shouting ensued, drumming throughout his throbbing head. Another figure composed from the shadows, slinking towards his form; the man, by the dazed glance Mycroft sent him, squatted beside him and stared unmoving. The sight of black coated humans whipped past him in slow motion, barging into the bathroom and stilling. He witnessed one of the members grip his trunk and hail it into the hall. Mycroft couldn’t muster enough of anything to tell them to leave him alone, to leave him to deal with the mess on his own. All he wanted was to stay on the sidelines and make his way through life. Voices sounded to be talking in hushed pitches but only with nonsense to the brother limply curled up. Yelling echoed for moments before the same voice, which had tempted him before, consumed them. The caramelized sound send shivers down his body, visible to the people surrounding him.  _Oh dear, you were only supposed to disappear and look what you’ve gone and done._

 

Blackness coated his vision, leaving him only to listen and feel. Something firm rested under his armpit, applying some pressure and some tugging. The sound of his neighbor’s voice flooded his ears, confusing him. Loud pangs followed, shattering the air around him. In the background, a thud faintly resonated. 

 

 _The bullet sings its little song in the air, a simple song_.

 

 

It felt like the flattened carpet was spinning under him, but he was only being scooted along the floor to the long corridor in which he had come from hours ago, but the time seemed like minutes to Mycroft. Moans and whines left his lips, trying to call out for this whole mess to end but then his throat closed and his ears blanked. Mycroft, unable to act upon anything, remained paralyzed within himself. When he finally regained his senses, his eyes forced themselves open. His head tilted to face the winding hall, but blocking the frightening view there was a young man curling over the floor and hurling silently on the flooring mere feet from his body, wearing the badge of the Scotland Yard. The man sensed his gaze and followed it back to the harsh, nearly dead eyes of the unmoving man. 

 


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is losing his grasp on reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kudos and everything you six dandy people! I updated early since I am on break and everything. Here's the next chapter and it is a bit confusing and scattered and everything but stick with me. It will all make a little more sense later on and next chapter is Mystrade tid-bits so stick with me here.

_Toxic, poisonous, venomous, noxious, lethal...._ Sherlock silently compiled a list. As the officer had stated prior to that moment, the inventory held the word toxic inside of its compilation. He was then dangling carelessly upon different, sturdier branch father up the towering tree. The word hung heavily in his head, burned like a logo on a television after pausing for far too long. It flashed and blinked out of him in a manner that, he would never admit, hurt. His fingers danced over the ridges in the wood, tracing the natural lines formed over time and wear. His higher-toned voice hummed a tune he could not place a proper name to, but rather, he let his mind concentrate on matters far more stressing. As his ribs crushed against the branch, he wrapped two lanky legs around the base, balancing himself. Dark curls draped over his vision like a veil, nearly cutting his vision in half. The intrusion didn’t bother him though as he usually allowed his locks to grow much longer and shaggier.

 

*****

Sherlock, gathering that this wasn't already implied, is not the name birth handed him upon arrival. The full context of the name in which the boy beheld was William Sherlock Scott Holmes. He never really clung to the ordinarily boring name William, Will, and often refused to acknowledge anyone who dared to call upon him with such. The truth was that the boy loved to attract attention; he sought perception. Every snide reply, every exhausted comment, they were all for show and attention. Even so that a majority of his audience found the intrusions to be quite offensive, the matter of them even listening was what the boy wanted. Before his troublesome days, Sherlock still had been keen to attract the eyes of bystanders. His early days consisted of blood curdling cries for heed and smacks at ankles for regard. Often his parents, mister and missus Holmes, grew angered at the young boy and banished him to the confines of his room without anyone to entertain him. His wails would carry on down the corridors and throughout the rooms of the manor. Seeing as she worked long, strenuous hours weekly, Mother came home exhausted and unable to handle all of the chaos the boy brought behind him. She, on multiple occasions, scooted past the fourth bedroom door without notice, where the smallest Holmes sat with teary eyes waiting for someone to keep him company. Her parenting, when it did happen to commence, was much less compassionate then his brother’s but much more so than his father’s. Father was strict and military in his sporadic teachings of obedience; they were also much less solicitous. To shape them into proper boys, cane and belt thrashed upon them, leaving untrusting bonds between them and their father. Mycroft, being the only being within the family able to withstand the annoying young lad, would curl up on his duvet and wait and wait and wait for the loud noises to end, and eventually, they always did. Frowning, Sherlock conjured more of words while also rearranged the order of them, keeping things easier to catalog.

 

*****

 

 

_Deadly, deleterious, detrimental, lethal, malicious, noxious, poisonous, toxic, venomous..._

 

 

The list kept lengthening and growing and twisting and burning. The more time and thought the boy shoved into the organized directory, the more amplifying the ache in his chest became. Old memories began to arise and pierce the boy. For such a young boy he held a great weight pressed tightly to his chest. In his head, he believed himself to be the culprit behind his family’s permanent vacation and blamed himself entirely. Dark thoughts brewed within the confines of his brain, not passing the seal of his lips. With every bleak opinion cast, another step taken away from the little control he possessed. _I’m the very foolish boy_ , he would think bitterly, scrunching his face sourly, _who had taken a shovel and dug a six-foot grave in the cemetery and buried my treasures below._ Thoughts like these flowed through his veins like the blood already occupying them, coursing through him brutally. The negative comment he thrust upon himself just widened the cracked door inside of the columbarium and before long, the entry was wide open for anything inside to escape. Before realizing what he had released within himself, a foreshadowing wave of distant regret washed through him.

 

 

That cemetery, the one housing the door, was somewhere no one would ever see or understand. Sherlock feared the potter’s field, the place where everything in his head perished dryly. His _mind palace_ , as he fancied calling it, wasn't elegant, contradicting many peoples’ thoughts. Often he found himself shifted to a fictitious courtroom, a chamber of justice, but as soon as the copper doors opened and the threshold crossed, he soared down into the darkness of the graveyard. Nothing was there to yank out a poor soul inside if a return desired. The boy had constructed a system though, however intermittent the results were, in which he laid little pieces of his mind to cling to as a technique to return him to his own controlled mind. He called the pieces _breadcrumbs_. The door would stand in the mossy dirt but led to empty blackness unseen because the door never opened on its own, at least. Curious as he was, Sherlock knew well enough that the probability of opening the intimidating passage to darkness and having it lead to a location greater than reality was slimmer than a string; he tiptoed around the rim of it, barely avoiding its cursory pleads for attention _. Everyone knows what killed that ridiculous cat_ , he would whisper to himself in troubling times, his intellect being far too high to allow him to stray beyond the immediate reaches of his mental box.

 

Sherlock started losing his grasp on his mind shortly after. From the perspective of an outsider, Sherlock tended to appear as a flaking crust on his mentality, chipping away until nothing remained. Sherlock, trapped inside of his mental prison, constantly stared at the tombstones of everything he had ever cherished for days on end. Those instances referred to a state of mind in which the subject has no knowledge of the outside world and is collected within the barriers of the mind, comas. Sherlock never really knew how long he was gone for, _minutes, hours?_ so rather than panicking and fussing about and causing a mess, he would explore the unknown reaches of his necropolis in a feeble attempt to manage whatever lay within. Occasionally, as he had that day, the boy would stumble upon a grave in which he was not familiar, such as the one-labeled ‘ _Words’_. He turned his head away in shame, only to take notice of the adjacent crypt.

 

*****

 

Sherlock, allowing cursory glances towards its neighboring grave, found himself standing above the gravestone marked ‘ _Blame’_. The first day he had stood in front of their home that they had first occupied had been equally as heinous. Conceptualize standing at the gated entrance of a Hell in which lonely, abandoned children stayed for the course of their childhood unless accepted by strangers. Then multiply the betrayal by ten thousand. Sherlock and Mycroft had been hand in hand upon entrance, creating a lasting impression of mock upon the other boys around. The residents preceding the two had already established a well-developed hierarchy with a fancy king and all. The king enjoyed picking the boys apart, crumbs of them falling off at each peck. Torments constantly threw themselves at the pair, threatening to crack their recent bonds, but nothing compared to the wise-jokes made towards Mycroft. Sherlock nearly lost everything in that fight on the September afternoon, almost deporting himself to a separate home than the other Holmes boy. Blame distributed itself onto the child for beginning the whole mess of fighting. Luckily, Mycroft had knowledge covering all of the right people and ideas flaking over where to aim. Unfortunately, this was not the only instance in which the boy had been set up for a failure; many following affairs pursued amenably.

 

 

 

Another event of misfortune had been recent at the time. _Approximately twelve, almost thirteen, days ago_ , Sherlock muttered to himself half dazed. The very instant sliced through into several different sectors at the many factors of the event. Not a single second of the moment had been forgotten, clear as the moon against the black backdrop of empty space beside. Each second inventoried in separate departments. The numbness from the night was brought back simply by recollection, ramifying the squeezing his esophagus into a choke, and it was murder to try to exorcise it out of his system. All hate towards Mycroft, much to his utter surprise, vanished instantly as the waistcoat flaring behind his brother disappeared down the cobblestone path to a taxi at the end of the drive. The bantering and arguing had always been brotherly, kindly, and never held intensions of real threat or anger, mostly. The largest byte of information stolen away from the whole picture was the temperature, as odd as that may sound. The night had chilly, cold for some maybe, with drifting currents of air drifting through lazily. No normal person would have been warm at the air outside, but Sherlock was clammy, hot. His palms were wetting profusely, neck dripping slowly, under arms leaking excess water, and these reactions were new. In no other situation had the boy become bothered by anything, especially pertaining to emotions of fear and love. His mind blanked with explanations thinking back thoroughly through each millisecond of the event. With a conclusion at the very eve of day two, he decided that it had eternally been his entire fault for allowing his older brother to grow wearily of him and eventually gather the courage to abandon him without a glance back.

 

 

Preceding the event, Sherlock secluded himself from the world and his mind. He developed a habit of sitting for minutes at a time without scraping over one thought, not really, and often times the boy scared himself back to reality. Blackness would swarm him and leave him in a brain-dead sort of hypnotic state. Upon awakening, a surge of hysteria would gush about his body, the unknown blackouts scaring the young boy. The symptoms, he had diagnosed after three days of intense research, were of posttraumatic stress disorder in which the victim loses memories in chunks as a blackout or enters a coma-like state. At these times, the other children noticed his drooping shoulders and hunching back and approached his form to beat around slumbering bear, per say. The least intelligent of the huddle brilliantly thought that poking him would be a marvelous idea, never really allowing the thought to sink into his frontal lobe. Therefore when a single, cubby finger probed the comatose boy, he lashed out and lurched at the group and violently hounded them with kicks and punches. His anger released itself through curled fingers and a snarled grin.

 

Once an instructor entered the scene, Sherlock resurfaced with grim features, not able to locate what propelled him into his violent fit. After the phenomenon, he didn’t allow himself the chance to harm another without ascendancy. Nothing stayed the same afterwards as the boys soon ganged up on the Holmes when he wandered alone away from prying eyes and returned the brutal favor graciously. Blacks and blues and greens and browns were shaded along his jaw and rimmed the skeletal outline of his eye socket. Definite fingerprints splattered into his wrists and neck from the near strangling and restricting executed in these brawls. The already poorly looking boy, due to his gaunt ribs and angular juts of his body, began to appear horrifying to the instructors even more so than normal. No actions taken however and the staff left the Sherlock, fending for himself in the mangling home.

 

 *****

 

Snapping away from the painful memories, he tried to pry one of his states to present to blackout the world for a moment or two. The blackness didn’t arrive though. Struggling deeply to conjure the will to stop his brain, he eventually gave in and left the little monster inside his filing cabinet to wander about. Sherlock's mind, or rather whatever was controlling a piece of it, scanned mercilessly about, wandering to the previously mentioned section of his mind where all the bad things were stored and closed off. Sherlock forebode the oncoming horrors, then manically striving to back away. This place was the blackness on the opposite side of the entryway; the commodities contained within being far too gruesome to quell with a silly shovel full of dirt and a tombstone with an etched on label. The darkness coiled and dared the boy to enter by whispering sweet nothings through to him.

 

 At once, he resurfaced to a roused mind plight and tried to claw away from the magnetic attraction to the open doorway. It screamed at him no louder than a whisper, heaving him into the empty nothingness. With fingers ripping up grass and dirt and mud, a higher authority seemed to clutch his ankles and to drag him into the abyss. His strength was eroding at a dangerously rapid pace, and eventually he couldn’t hang on any longer.

 

*****

 

Finally tripping through the barrier of sanity, Sherlock collapsed against the tree in horror. Nothing was standing still; hundreds upon thousands of everything drenched him into a shocked state of paralysis. His back squashed against the tree with unimaginable force, bruising his porcelain skin with the natural grooved print of the bark. Beautiful, wide eyes stared horrified at the night sky, seeing invisible creatures roaming past his sight.

 

*****

 

Once admitted, the monsters ruled his brain as tyrants, refusing to back from their high thrown. The prancing hellions swirled around the boy shrieking and playing and ruining; no amount of torture would have trumped the excruciating pain Sherlock felt throughout the meager minute or so. Once more, an aching memory forced its way inside of the wasteland and he had no clue where to start searching. His body writhed against the tree base, arching and snapping. One particular varmint fixated specifically on toying with boy in a manner far worse than the other dwelling beasts. Every axon within the meat on Sherlock genuflected before the demented shadow; it compulsively played his nervous system like a bow and a bass, beautiful and demented. This parasite stole a name, not yet known, of a man. He created himself within the being of Sherlock with only a mere door slamming him out of the real life, but then he was free, set off by one mistake of a vulnerable boy. Sherlock had taunted the spirit far too much just prancing around the entryway and finally it had had enough of the nonsense. Each second was a sharp note completely whipped from the instrument that was Sherlock, playing him gracelessly and snarling inhumanly at the boy. The bow slashed the skin, slicing it and peeling it back into bloody streaks. A hum of accomplishment stalked every precise gesture, creating the song of the demon that would echo within Sherlock’s head for the numbered years.

 

The game ended early, though. _Sadly_ , it whirred. The creature retracted its claws from the base of his instrument and cocked his head at a frighteningly angular position. Screams did not help the boy now, for he was far too lost inside of himself to begin to swim back to the top of the drowning darkness. The savage addressed the disruption as a simple pity on the boy and continued to think about how unhinged the impression of the demon might present itself had he tortured the poor, solemn boy, who had just suffered from the abandonment of his beloved brother, even more? A wicked smile leapt over its lips.

 

 _Toxic… I'm blushing_ , it seethed between teeth, _but that man’s flattery won't get you anywhere, dear, as I can make you suffer so I shall._

 

A faint golden glow illuminated from outside of his eyelids, blinding him. The darkest around him vanished, replaced with a glorious white. The contorted figure wrapped around him snapped a hiss and a glare towards the source, red eyes blazing like a million bombs. Another simple smirk sent Sherlock's way before caving in on itself and disappearing. The smack of reality altogether was slow, like waking, but as he neared consciousness, the speed accelerated until he collided as a man of suicide and pavement. Hollow breaths escaped the boy, forced, as he began to notice his surroundings. A lull of nausea tingled throughout his body, trying to register why his mind finally flipped the switch inside and allowed him to return. The second question of wonder was when he had indeed recovered from his comatose state, for he had no recollection of immediately snapping through to the natural darkness of midnight swallowing the outdoors. Quavering fingers were hastily plucking at the buttons sewn to the wooly fabric that was his throat, desperately unable to accomplish anything with the immense tremors and jerks the digits were doing. A sigh of empty irritation left his lips as he struggled to reduce the trembles to dull shaking that only increased his panic entirely. With a blurred glance to panorama the surrounding branches and pitched sky, he hazily predicted that it was probably around twilight and allowed his eyes to shut tightly, feeling the nighttime breeze dance over his features, soothing him. The image of the devil that danced within him seared onto every little thing he saw, the dark, empty eyes staring back at him with the glint of liberation peeking past. Sherlock knew he was no longer safe from himself.

 

The voice inside of his head was bounding through the court's corridors, singing a jolly little tune out of key something close to the thrum from before. The creature slithered across every doorway and gathered the small remnants everyone seemed to forget with time. Remains of the boy began to scatter across the scenes as crumbs, open for anyone to snatch up and defile. _As he walked through the trees, he left a trail of crumbs behind him to mark the way_ , Sherlock thought wearily, lolling his head to the right to rest uneasily atop his shoulder. His mind then continued to spew up his troubling history behind closed eyelids, darkness. The darkness within his mind would never grant him slumber, but who needed sleep when there was something curious brewing within? Another loll of his shoulders and head sent pain echoing through him. _But the little boy had forgotten about all that hungry birds that lived in the forest_ , he concluded.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That light is important because it has a bond with something else in one to two chapters from now and I think it might make sense.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After finding the body and a feeble Mycroft...

“Tell me again what happened.” The man demanded, thrusting his fists into the metallic table, a ring echoing through the air. The pale file in front of the officer held everything having to do with Mycroft in it, every attribute about his life and history. He would have begrudged that information being out in the open for anyone to survey, but at that juncture, he was far too engaged in assembling his cognizance first. His body paralyzed in the unendurable seat, hands clenched at the metal chair he sat upon and eyes stared haphazardly at the bland wall. The shudder that trickled through his soma was insistent, driving into every sector of his being and mind. The same force caused his fingers to tremble at every harsh word spat at him by the vigorous man, resulting in him appearing laughably frail. The police officer across from him was piqued from the overabundance of time spent catechizing the petrified man who had been dragged through the front doors by four men.

 

“I didn’t do it…” Mycroft murmured, already steadily descending into a collapse of mental stability, for the numbered time that night. Another sigh of complete irritation escaped the officer, who rubbed the back of his neck in a tired indication, closing his eyes and allowing a moment of tranquility to fill in the gaps of shouts. With one final huff of exhaustion, he left without the portfolio that lay on the table and retreated to the door where he slunk out, locking automatically behind him. Outside, three voices bantered back and forth, attempting to concur what to make of the _one_ witness, and possible suspect, of the occurrence. The man that had failed at interrogating Mycroft was slinging his opinion into the air more than the others had theirs, wholly jaded from dealing with the irresponsive man who had witnessed the gory sight. Little to their immediate knowledge, he recovered specks of his consciousness back from petrification, aware of the boarder thing that were happening around him. Even with the chaos of reinstating his brain to thoroughgoing conscious capacity, he had heard a majority of the conversation they muttered directly outside of the inquiry room. He also knew that as soon as he allowed them a happenstance of seeing his half-composed form, the queries would commence. If he allowed such events to follow, he was cornered. The probability of the Yard deporting him to the orphanage was far too great to abscond; he needed to assess a fleeing route expeditiously.

 

Mycroft’s fingers drummed absently on the chair’s limbs, a random message coded in Morse was a tranquilizing relaxation for his spastic nerves. The sequence of the dead man slashed in the tub was far too much for him to compute with the entire vacating situation in perspective as well. His mind burst like a jam doughnut exceedingly overfilled with strawberry jelly, only the sweet spread were details in his head. Recalling only a mere half-hour ago had proved difficult for the erudite man, seeing, as he was dizzy and slowly plunging. His memory surfaced with the befall happening directly before the harrowing flats had even come about, when he abandon this sibling. His throat clenched, narrowly admitting him adequate margin to respire. Once he ventured forward, he only felt ailing and nauseous until the sensation transcended and prompted to the glimpse of the young man purging beside him. He recalled every facet of his countenance and physique, as he was the person there when he finally began execrating himself for the first while in an extensive period. After the man convened his partner over, another guild of uniformed men hauled him erratically to his feet and trawled him down the hall inefficiently. The journey back to the station had been even worse than heaving him to the vehicle, for Mycroft vomited over his shirt and the fabricated backseat of the car, causing the entire cab to reek of stomach acid.

 

The door to the chamber brandished ajar and lingered that way. There was a vaguely familiar man in the entryway, distinguishing by using only the corner of his eyes to descry, and the man was espying back at his fellow officers, as if requesting permission to enter. The other two envoys nodded, evanescing around the corner doubtlessly to lounge in room sustaining the looking glass, where they scrutinized him. He realized there was a feasibility that no one was occupying the room, but on the back of his head, he felt their presence breathing down his neck. He felt taut and uncomfortable in his skin at that moment, trapped in a skinned cage inescapable by any man. The feeble officer strode towards the table carefully, as if traversing a minefield, and stood at the other end of the extensive slab, analyzing the contents of the dossier. Mycroft resolved to hysterics, loathing that the foreigner was peering into his fauna of which he had no corporate in. Immediately, he elevated his eyes to gander at the man who was prodding at him. In the room was the constable who was retching up beside to him on the floor, who of which was also shuffling through the manifold papers about him. Luckily, it appeared as though there was naught listed about his brother or his poorhouse antiquity, simply the death of his parents and his sufferings. A thorn of pressure gashed through his serenity making him release a quivering breath that sounded far too lurid to have been inaudible. The man, whose name was the only feature Mycroft had not collected, shut the folder indolently, sliding it away from him. The scrape of metal against the concrete floor miffed his ears, too high for his preference. He sat gently, _probably still recovering from the grotesque scene at the flats_ , Mycroft supposed, trying to perceive the man and his experience for his own corruption.

 

“Mycroft Holmes?” He whispered hands folded together on the table, squeezing slightly. He enquired in a mode that was parallel to the way he entered the room, still questioning his authority. Mycroft met his eyes, blatantly staring into the warm ogle of the man, trying his hardest to clasp the smooth cracks in his stability from entirely shattering. Something about the way the man was beholding him made him want to expose up his mind and permit the man the frolic anywhere inside. _Safe_ , he agreed with himself _, he looks safe_. Realizing that he hadn’t yet countered the almost question, he swallowed the protuberance in his throat and overlapped his arms in his lap, tugging lightly at the manacles on each of his previously thrashing wrists. Luckily, his legs had full usage available, so he was not completely disabled. His chin was still down, casting gloomy obscurities over his face as he nodded sluggishly. The man gulped, looking just as cornered as Mycroft felt.

 

“I don’t know if you remember much…” He stopped, waiting for Mycroft to confirm his declaration, but he didn’t move a single morsel. The officer cleared his throat, “but we require your cooperation if we want to get anywhere with the invest-“ the man cut himself off, ostensibly thinking better of the proclamation, however he had modestly rephrased himself, “helping you and whoever was in that…”

 

Another guzzle went down his thin throat visibly as he clasped his hands together tauter than before and turning his palms ghostly grey. The last term of the sentence had no reason for avowal; as for the two, it was a horrendous affair on both of their parts. A cold sweat broke from Mycroft’s brow, the conquest of being petrified engraved in his bones. Bloody extracts from the bathroom appeared over his sight, blinding him for a minute with red images of the mangled man. Closing his eyes for no more than two seconds, he reopened them with a coop psychologically disabling the feelings from infiltrating him again. Mycroft noted how the man only wore the uniform on his body rather than the ample shoulder transistor and utility belt that accompanied a typical officer on normal occasions. For a moment, he considered speaking but then reminisced the best alternative would be to gauge a route of emission before telling the Yard something they could use to clamp him longer or to speak against him. His eyes swiveled past each corner, checking for surveillance cameras or bugs. The only thing recording him or eavesdropping to him were the people in the neighboring room where they congregated to gather information. He felt vulnerable at that precise moment, with all eyes glowering into him and judging him. A burst of anger flushed through him, turning his cheeks and his ears splotchy with pinkish hues. His arms unraveled, returning to drum harshly against the chair legs with random tremors of rhythm.

 

“No.” Mycroft finally articulated, thrusting his symptoms of rage down to simmer lightly, always ready to overflow. The deep voice stunned the still unknown officer, forcing his eyes to lock onto the man in an observant manner and really take him in. For a short instance, he hadn’t comprehended what Mycroft was referring to, as there had been a rather lengthy pause in question and answer. Mycroft didn’t appreciate the way his eyes looked to pilfer him apart at the poorly stitched seams, so he tried to turn the man’s attention back to the topic of conversation, “I can’t say I recall most of the eventide.”

 

“Would you like me to…?” He began, leaning forward to rest his elbows against the chilly metallic table, staring frontward to speak only to Mycroft. His voice was gentle, naturally it seemed, and made it even more difficult for him to resist bursting out in an embarrassing choke of bawling. He swallowed multiple times, conveying the knot in his throat back to the surface, shearing off his breathing yet again. The question hung precariously in the air; _do I really seek to remember_? He decided posthaste, shaking his head far too nippily and dizzying his mind. The swirling room gave him a headache, making his suffering even worse. The palate of acid still parked at the back of his throat, tasting toxic and disgusting in his mouth. The officer didn’t seem astounded; he even looked gratified that Mycroft had chosen to surface the terrible memories of the night. Breathing for the eldest Holmes became increasingly problematic for him, something enfolding his esophagus tighter and tighter with each minute ticking off the clock.

 

“How old are you?” The man asked, sounding sincere and honest. His eyes wouldn’t leave Mycroft as they glared directly into his, locking him in an inescapable stare down. His throat released immediately, surprising the Holmes more than marginally. His hand snapped to his neck, dragging at the shackles, to make sure someone wasn’t holding a collar to him that he hadn’t detected before. There was nothing for him to yank off his neck. Still intertwined in the gaze of the man, he lowered his face even more so only his eyes face him, lured to turn his whole body in a symbol of preservation. The man seemed to understand, barely leaving a trice to response before adding a supplementary note, “Know that I can look into your file whether you approve or not. I thought you’d like _Option A_ better though.”

 

This caught Mycroft attention in the sense that bribery, or rather blackmail, was usually his forte. He adjusted his shoulders, liberating the tiniest dose of tension built up over the course of the unearthly day. Mycroft considered lying, although he knew if he made the statement acrimoniously implausible the man would check his file again; he couldn’t allow that. Therefore, the truth was the paramount option at that point.

 

“I am eighteen,” Mycroft stretched, not completely lying to the officer he felt the might be able to use in the future. The man grinned, obviously pleased by the fact that he had gotten the hermit to open up and come out of the shell. He also noticed something else gleaming behind the no-teeth smile he portrayed, as his eyes cast downward in a sense of wistful melancholy. He was inveigled to speak out and solicit what he didn’t know, aggravated that his mind was still recuperating from the unarmed condition after the dreadful revelation. Zipping his lips, he raised the hand still wrapped around the shank to his other palm, cupping them together nostalgically. His fingertips made contact over his mouth, the bases of his fingers not touching. His elbows mimicked the other man’s, quiescent on the table for support. Mycroft’s torso, chillingly slender, didn’t touch the table even with the chair scooted in as far as it could; the officer took notice of the diminutive detail.

 

“How likely, I’m twenty.” The man chortled flippantly, his tension upon entering the area vanishing rapidly. Leaving his words to dangle a moment more, he scooped them back up and laid down a dissimilar set. “College?”

 

Mycroft puckered a brow over his hands, sincerely speculating for an instant whether he had imagined the control station and was actually at an interview for a profession. The private reservations wore into him, making him scrutinize everything with suspicion. As if supposing an alter in outlook towards him, the man twisted the matter around, so it focused on himself rather than the somnolent boy folding into himself before him. “I just got out, actually. Started training early and then they plucked me here.”

 

Mycroft didn’t move, perplexed and wondering where to shift from there. The day was like a storybook, _Hansel and Gretel_ , each stir a fortuity to build or rupture him with no way to erase the ink once on the page. He leapt at his odds, anxious of how he might ruin each one; therefore, he examined the potential trapdoors and reviewed the moment before making any moves. The reality that he wasn’t yet wholly returned to his pristine composure didn’t help him in this circumstance at all. Since there were no atrocious consequences to answering the soft man, he took a tread forward in the _woods_ , trying to find his way back _home_.

 

“I don’t have the opportunity for something as pretentious as college education.” Mycroft garbled, finally breaching the itchy gaze with the man away to stare dishonorably at his hands. He reviled discussing how deprived he was, let alone himself at _all_ , for he used to have everything in the world he desired, unquestionably college. After his parents’ death, all the money disseminated to his other family members, who greedily milked their family dry and left the orphaned boys to suffer _alone_. He quavered his head, clearing the angering feelings of his past. At that moment, he needed to focus on the man’s feedback to the dialogue. If negative, his commentary would cease and he would return to his quiescent status. Hearing the shuffle of clothes caught his inquisitiveness, but he never peeked up no matter how much it nagged at his mind, afraid of what expression the man might hold.

 

“Your file…” Those were the first words to escape the man’s lips, already starting to seal Mycroft’s mouth, “said you parents passed. Didn’t they leave you money?”

 

Mycroft visibly scoffed, knowing then that the man had snooped far enough into his file to see the key ideas, but obviously not the minor minutiae that made up the story. He permitted a cursory glance at the tan folder a foot or two away from his grasp and then returned his eyes to deposit upon the man’s face. He didn’t want to react to the issue; it was too embarrassing admitting that even your kin thought you were too pompous to care for through all that happened. The shame he felt when he looked back on every family reunion they had ever hosted on the holidays as he introduced himself to the remote relatives. Their eyes adjudicated him, thinking he was too candid, too intellectual, and too bothersome to keep in contact with really. Even he and Sherlock’s grandmother refused to be near them, always grumbling to their mother that they were _demons that needed help before they hurt anyone_. He felt his skin prick and constrict, squeezing his bones all too much. The man comprehended he had struck something dire and left the question unanswered. _Surely, if the others were supervising, wouldn’t they have bunged all the stupid rambling off the detective by now_ , _or had they actually left them to chatter?_

 

_Don’t be farcical; they’re waiting for me to crumble away._

 

“Are you going to close up again?” The question gonged the air, vacuuming any racket from the room and substituting the stolen space with utter hush. Not a single breath breathed, stopping the air short in both throats of the men. Mycroft deadpanned at the inquiry, staring intensely at the man and contemplating whether answering _no_ would only attest himself a liar. Of course, he didn’t want to open up, the horrifying reflection still glowed over everything he looked at, and the red swirled behind closed eyelids. He was so drained from holding in the little screams that sought to bustle their way out and elucidate the room with deafening roars. He could not though; he needed to flee this prison. Passively, he let a shaky smirk grace his face, attempting to bring the mystic attitude his brother was a profession at executing, and winked acutely. The gestures put off the man, who was expecting either total silence and stillness or a single word.

 

_His name is still missing_ , Mycroft realized, regretting leaving the question unreciprocated as the man rose from his chair, shoving it back with his thighs, and sighing gruffly. Dread spread through him as he grasped that he had made a blunder worth a million clouts; he needed the name as a final clue. Just as the officer plucked the file from the table, he raised a finger signaling him to rise as well. Mycroft’s stomach plummeted, wondering where he was departing to for the remainder of his silent revolt. The handcuffs on his wrists pulled the chair up with him, clanking too vociferously for his taste. The man trudged over with key in hand, giving him a stern look, wordlessly asking him if he would oblige for the moment and not run as soon as the metal was unlinked to the chair. Mycroft nodded, staring at him as he crouched to click the locks off, slightly uncomfortable with the proximately of legroom between the man and his skin. He rose quickly, leading the way to the hall and expecting the Holmes to follow suit. He did and they emerged into the hallway and rounded the corner to the room where the other side of the mirror would certainly be. Inside, Mycroft halted when the swiveling chairs were vacant and all the screens long ago turned off. The officer stepped inside and sat down at one of the chairs only to wiggle the mouse to open up the prior page on one of the computers. The image on the screen was from a television show, streamed onto the computer to watch. Obviously, he meant to tell Mycroft that there was no one but him hearing the information exchanged between the two. Still skeptical, he waited in the hall, glancing down the corridor at the police officers passing through the entries without noticing him. He trembled slightly, unsure of the nearing future.

 

“Honestly, bloke, I don’t think I have ever met someone so skittish.” He laughed with no amusement coating the chuckles. “They had me talk to you for a reason, and that’s because we both were a little messed up from today, so what’s the harm in talking it through?” Mycroft looked at him; he really looked at the slouch of his tired shoulders and the slight tremble of his own fingers, probably from the exhaustion of the day. He stood up again, meeting him at the door and closing the door behind him, cornering Mycroft at the end of the hallway. His shorter stature appeared even littler against the gangly Holmes, but nonetheless, the man beamed up at him with a sincere smirk, “I’m Greg.”

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, if you notice any grammatical errors, please inform me. Or if a certain area is harder to comprehend or anything of such sorts, I'd appreciate. Criticism for construction is welcomed with open arms as well!


End file.
